Meet Lionel Boyce, Project Hail Mary’s security officer Carl – and hip-hop musician

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Ryan Gosling stars as Ryland Grace in Amazon MGM Studios’ Project Hail Mary. Photo: Handout

Starring Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace, a high school teacher who wakes up on a spaceship with no memories and has to figure out how to save the world from microscopic parasites that are eating the sun, Project Hail Mary is adapted from author Andy Weir’s 2021 novel of the same name. Weir is also behind The Martian, which was adapted into the 2015 film starring Matt Damon.

Lionel Boyce was part of a hip-hop collective called Odd Future. Photo: @lionel.boyce/Instagram

As his memory returns, Grace recalls the events that led to him being aboard the spaceship and those involved, including Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) – the scientist in charge of Project Hail Mary – and security officer Carl, played by Lionel Boyce.

Here’s everything you need to know about Lionel Boyce.

He started out as a musician

Early in his career as a musician, Lionel Boyce never considered becoming an actor. Photo: @lionel.boyce/Instagram

Lionel Boyce was born in May 1991. He grew up in Inglewood, California, and made his start in showbiz as a member of Odd Future, an alternative hip-hop collective that formed in 2007, alongside Tyler the Creator and Frank Ocean.

Boyce and Tyler attended the same high school and became friends during their senior year in drama class. Between 2012 and 2015, Boyce – then known as L-Boy – co-created and produced Loiter Squad, a live comedy sketch series created by Odd Future for Adult Swim. It was then that Boyce was first drawn towards acting, a career he had never considered before.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to do it, it just never crossed my mind to do it. It was nowhere in my vicinity,” Boyce said in a recent WWD interview. “And we started making the show and I remember feeling like, ‘Wow, this is cool.’”