Staff were dumbfounded when Han Solo turned up for dinner at Nigerian restaurant 805 on the Old Kent Road on a quiet Sunday night in September last year, said owner Emmanuel James. “Someone came out the back to see me and was like ‘Harrison Ford’s here’ and I didn’t believe it. Staff were asking each other, ‘are we absolutely sure that’s him?’,” he said.
“You just would never expect it, so it took a few minutes to work out if it was really him. Seeing someone out of context, it’s hard for it to sink in, you know.”
In an video interview on the Bafta website, Peckham-born Boyega said Ford had asked to see the area he was from, and when they arrived at the restaurant in south-east London, his co-star “walked up into that place like he was Nigerian”.
Boyega, who has Nigerian parents, said Ford had treated the place like a Tinseltown hotspot, walking in slowly and glancing around to see if he had been noticed.
“People always said ‘when you meet Harrison, he’s casual, he’s laid back’, and he’s all those things but at the same time, he knows who he is,” he continued.
“He knows he’s Indiana Jones, he knows that he’s Han Solo, so that’s why when we walked into an environment where people didn’t expect him there he walks in slow motion.
So they can take it in.”
Ford and Boyega sat in a corner table by the bar and ordered fruit cocktails, James said. Ford opted for one of the restaurant’s most popular dishes: a traditional Nigerian Egusi soup, made with ground seeds, and served with pounded yam, costing £14. Bodega ordered the £11 jollof fried rice with plantain.
Customers left the pair alone until they got up to leave and then several people went over to speak to them.
Guardian
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