Amandla Stenberg speaks out on The Acolyte backlash and cancellation

The Star Wars fandom has long had a problem with racism—just ask Moses Ingram or Kelly Marie Tran—and recently The Acolyte star Amandla Stenberg has borne the brunt of it. “Fans” were so incensed that they review-bombed the show, screaming “woke” like crybabies.

When The Acolyte was canceled after one season—something that was drastically mishandled by Disney— the racists crowed. It was a shameful moment, but they seem to just keep piling up when Star Wars is involved. Now, Stenberg has broken her silence on the cancellation of the show and discussed her thoughts on the racist abuse.

“I’m going to be transparent and say [the cancellation is] not a huge shock for me,” Stenberg said in an Instagram Stories video. “There has been a rampage of vitriol that we have faced since the show was even announced, when it was still just a concept and 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.”

Stenberg explained that those things badly affected her, and she had “kind of moved through those feelings in various ways, including being vocal about it myself.” She actually wrote a song, “Discourse” in response to the racism, and posted it on Juneteenth.

Stenberg finished her video by thanking the fans who had stood by her, and saying she had been honored to be part of the Star Wars universe. And indeed The Acolyte was a work to be proud of. In amongst the review-bombing, it’s easy to forget it actually scored well with critics, and it introduced Star Wars fans (the real ones) to a whole host of interesting new characters.

Amandla Stenberg also suffered racism on The Hunger Games

One of the most saddening things about all this is that it’s not even the first time Stenberg has been targeted by racists. When she was still a child, she was cast as Rue in The Hunger Games and was instantly subjected to a wave of hate on social media, with supposed fans saying some truly disgusting things.

Stenberg has long been an advocate for Black communities and has spoken out on sexism and gender identity. (She actually identifies as non-binary, but uses she/her pronouns.) All the backlash just goes to show that she must be doing something right. It’s a huge shame she won’t get to continue what was one of her biggest roles to date.