John Boyega delivers one of the most powerful performances of his career in Red, White and Blue, the third film in Small Axe, which is Steve McQueen’s BBC/Amazon film anthology series.

In a recent interview with Shadow and Act, Boyega spoke to us about how the timeliness of the film increased even more given the global pandemic and the global response to systemic racism amid the continuous fatal police shootings of unarmed Black people.

“It more shines a light on the fact that nothing has changed in a very, very long time and that is the alarming thing…that this will always be seen as timeless because every year, something is done to help spark up the tension,” he explained. “And for us, especially as Black people, to get this kind of insight and perspective at this time, before any of this [the pandemic and BLM protests] happened when we were making this, we saw it as a way of shining a light on a perspective that we don’t get to see often. And knowing that Steve McQueen has the pull to make this global, I think this is also very, great for the global Black community to also see what has happened over here in the UK, and for us in the UK that doesn’t even know about it. You have a bit of a history lesson that I hope, you know, just prompts some more research.”

We also asked Boyega, who is becoming increasingly active as a producer behind the scenes, if he thought the pandemic is an opportunity to change industry systems for the better or if he thought things would continue to get worse for marginalized people before they get better — check out the full interview below: