Daisy Ridley “couldn’t sleep” after backlash over John Boyega “privelege” comments

nme.com:

Daisy Ridley has opened up about the distress she felt following an 2019 interview in which she was asked about her “privilege” growing up compared to her Star Wars co-star John Boyega.Ridley starred as Rey alongside Boyega in three Star Wars outings, films The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019).The comments, which were made in a Guardian interview, came after Ridley was asked by the interviewer about her “privileged” upbringing.

The interviewer quizzed Ridley on “if she thinks it has been easier to be confident and navigate her celebrity because of the privilege in her life” including “boarding school and her upbringing.” Ridley attended Tring Park Performing Arts School in Hertfordshire on a scholarship.The interviewer went on to write that Ridley felt there was “little difference between her experience and that of her co-star John Boyega, who grew up in south London to British Nigerian immigrant parents.”Ridley said in the Guardian interview: “John grew up on a council estate in Peckham and I think me and him are similar enough that… no… Also, I went to a boarding school for performing arts, which was different.”Now, in a new interview with The Telegraph, Ridley has opened up about the comments, claiming that her words were taken out of context.She told the outlet: “I literally couldn’t sleep after that came out…because I felt like, honestly, it was a purposeful de-contextualising.

I was reading it thinking, ‘that’s not what I meant, that’s not what I meant.’“It was incredibly upsetting, and it’s interesting when you’ve spoken about something 100 times, and then just the lens changes slightly of how that’s viewed.