John Boyega reflects on the killing of his childhood friend Damilola Taylor in a new BBC Two documentary, revisiting a trauma he witnessed as an eight-year-old that shaped his life.
On 27 November 2000, the 10-year-old Taylor was stabbed in the leg with a broken bottle and left to die in a concrete stairwell in Peckham, south London, as he walked home from an after-school club at Peckham library. Boyega was one of the last people to see Taylor alive. The pair had developed a close friendship since Taylor's move to the UK from Nigeria in August 2000.
"Speaking about it could possibly help. I haven't revisited this in a long time. Yeah, my heart is just beating," Boyega says in the documentary's opening scene. "It kept me up at night because I was just with the guy," he adds.
Taylor's death shocked the nation. All the suspects in the attack were children. Securing a manslaughter conviction took six years and three separate trials at the Old Bailey, at a total cost of £16m.
Now a father himself, Boyega is exploring how the killing shaped him as a person and how it will influence his approach to parenthood. The documentary marks his first extended public reflection on an event that remained largely private for decades.