Amandla Stenberg, dual star of the recent Star Wars Disney+ show The Acolyte, took to social media this week to discuss her thoughts on the show’s cancelation—and, well, after everything that happened, she wasn’t surprised by it.
“It’s not a huge shock for me,” she said on Instagram Stories. “Of course, I live in the bubble of my own reality but 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 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. And you know 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.”
Created by Leslye Headland, The Acolyte starred Stenberg as both Mae and Osha, twins born out of the Force whose mere existence puts a fly in the ointment of both the Jedi and the Sith. Set during the High Republic hundreds of years before any other on-screen Star Wars story, the show was unmerciful with how it handled its characters, its thoughts on Star Wars, and more. It was always bound to be divisive but even so, Stenberg felt like the show was always up against it.
“It’s not lost on me, how the way that these events have unfolded is also due to the hyper divisiveness of the time that we live in that is driven, I would say at this point, by echo chambers of thought and algorithms that reinforce our biases,” Stenberg continued. “And I think that applies to everybody but I think that in a particular sect of people, it manifests as a lot of fear for what is changing. A lot of hatred for anything that is other. And I would challenge us all and challenge myself to continue questioning what it is that I digest and think critically about what shapes it.”
Nevertheless, Stenberg said she was grateful to have been a part of the experience and to the fans who watched. “It has been an incredible honor and dream for me to be in this universe,” she said. “Even though of course I’m very sad about the show being canceled and I’m sad about us not being able to give people who are invested into it more, I still just feel a lot of levity and joy around the fact that I got to experience it, and that people loved it and that people were so responsive.”
“I pored through a lot of different iterations of fan art and ship art and fan theories and things that were just so beautiful and filled my heart with joy,” she said. “And I just want to let those people know out there who supported us in that way, and supported us vocally 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 and it made all of the challenging elements of it completely worthwhile for me.”
She also thanked the show’s creator Leslye Headlund. “I just fucking love that bitch,” Stenberg said. “She’s just one of the best people in the world. I think she’s so incredibly talented and unique, and I’ll love her forever, and I will love this experience with her forever.”
And, of course, Stenberg brought it back to the fans. “I also just want to thank everybody who watched it,” she said. “Thank you for being so loving and supportive and excited and nerdy and awesome and I’ll continue to process this for a long time.”
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