Acolyte Star Amandla Stenberg Speaks Out About the “Bigotry” the Axed Series Faced
Mike Marsland/Wire Image via Getty Images
In a series of Instagram story posts on Wednesday, actor Amandla Stenberg said that they were not shocked that their Star Wars spinoff series The Acolyte was cancelled given the vitriolic reactions some fans had to the show, which starred multiple people of color, including several Black women.
Stenberg, who is bisexual and nonbinary, fronted the Disney+ show, alongside South Korean actor Lee Jung-Jae, out queer actor Charlie Barnett and British actress Jodie-Turner Smith. Set a century before the earliest Star Wars prequels, The Acolyte abandoned more Skywalker lore in favor of a new — and different — kind of story, even including a coven of lesbian space witches.
In their Instagram story posts, which were transcribed by Variety, Stenberg said the cast and the show received a “rampage of hyper-conservative bigotry and vitriol.”
“I’m going to be transparent and say it’s not a huge shock for me,” Stenberg said of the cancellation. They added that the vitriol began before the show even premiered. “That’s when we started experiencing a rampage of, I would say, hyper-conservative bigotry and vitriol, prejudice, hatred and hateful language towards us.”
As with many other projects led by women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people in the past — including other entries in the Star Wars franchise — The Acolyte got “review-bombed,” meaning that fans, many of whom may not have watched or engaged with the series, left negative reviews online to tarnish the show’s reputation. When The Acolyte debuted in June, it earned critical praise, debuting with a score over 80% on Rotten Tomatoes, per Wired. However, a few weeks after its debut, the audience score sank to around 13%.
The first out queer person to create a *Star Wars* property spoke to *The Hollywood Reporter* about the “anti-woke” crowd’s reaction to the show.
“It has been an incredible honor and dream for me to be in this universe,” Stenberg added. “I just want to let those people know out there who supported us in that way, and supported us vocally — despite and in the face of all of the vitriol that we received and the kind of the targeted attack, I would say, we received by the alt-right — just that you were deeply loved and appreciated. And it made this job all the worthwhile for me.”
Though Acolyte did not match the numbers of other Disney+ offerings set in the Star Wars universe, its debut episode reached over 11 million viewers in five days, the largest debut on Disney+ this year.
Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland, who is gay, told The Hollywood Reporter that she did not feel Acolyte was “queer with a capital Q,” and was saddened by the fandom’s reaction of equating any queer content with bad content.
“Honestly, I feel sad that people would think that if something were gay, that that would be bad,” Headland told THR. “It makes me feel sad that a bunch of people on the internet would somehow dismantle what I consider to be the most important piece of art that I’ve ever made.”
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