In a recent interview with Glamour, Jodie Turner-Smith, a star of the canceled Star Wars series The Acolyte, has accused Disney of failing to protect the actors in the series and the wider franchise from a particularly nasty section of the fanbase. She claims that Disney has a tendency to stay silent when actors face negative feedback online.
“They’ve got to stop doing this thing where they don’t say anything when people are getting fucking dog-piled on the internet with racism and bullshit. It’s just not fair to not say anything. It’s really unfair.”
Turner-Smith, who played a lesbian witch in the latest cancelled Disney+ Star Wars show, claims in the interview that she has faced negative comments throughout her career. She also believes that it’s time for Disney and other major studios to make a strong statement against fans who don’t like their “woke” shows filled identity politics.
“It would just be nice if the people that have all the money” – whether that be Disney or any studio – “were showing their support and putting their feet down. Say this is unacceptable: ‘You’re not a fan if you do this.’ Make a really big statement and just see if any money leaves. I bet you it won’t, because people of colour, and especially Black people, make up a very large percentage of buying power. They might find that it’s actually more lucrative for them, but everyone’s using ‘woke’ like it’s a dirty word.”
Gay activists and other supporters of the show claim the series faced a “review bombing” campaign, although it appeared that most Star Wars fans had very good reasons for disliking the series. The paid critics brought the Rotten Tomatoes score up to a respectable 78%, but the Audience Score currently hovers around 18%. That’s lower than the much-maligned Star Wars Holiday Special, officially earning the record as the worst Star Wars content ever made.
Related Disney & Lucasfilm Celebrate ‘The Acolyte’ as ‘Gayest Star Wars Yet’
But it wasn’t any supposed “review bombing” that hurt the show. The Acolyte was canceled in August due to low viewership and a bloated budget. In fact, the 8 episode series cost Disney nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.
Nonetheless, Amandla Stenberg, another “diverse” star of the series, reacted to the cancelation by alleging that abuse was foisted on the entire cast faced throughout the show’s run.
“…for those who aren’t aware, there has been a rampage of vitriol that we have faced since the show was even announced, when it was still just a concept, no one had even seen it. That’s when we started experiencing a rampage of, I would say, hyper-conservative bigotry and vitriol, prejudice, hatred, and hateful language towards us. This really affected me when I first got the job, because it’s just not something even though I anticipated it happening, it’s not something you can fully understand what it feels like until it’s happening to you.”
Like Turner-Smith, Stenberg never produced any receipts for this “rampage of vitriol,” although admittedly, her ill-advised diss track insulting white critics may have gotten more than a few angry responses from Star Wars fans.
It remains to be seen if Disney will address these concerns raised by Turner-Smith and others. However, it’s worth noting once again that a LOT of fans had legitimate reasons for disliking the series, and without being able to produce any receipts, these allegations of racism and abuse could very well be overblown.
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