Actors Who Received Racist Backlash Over Casting
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Not everyone is supportive when different actors break the mold and do groundbreaking roles they’ve been waiting for. Unfortunately, quite a few people out there are intolerant to characters not being white. To put it bluntly, there are a lot of racists out there who send evil things to different stars of color. A Disney character is a different race? Twitter backlash. An actor’s race doesn’t match the ones from the comic book? Backlash. You get the point; it’s racism.
Sadly, this happens with many shows and movies. Seriously, any person of color in the new Star Wars projects gets so many negative comments. It’s a sick pattern. We all also remember the Twitter battle that erupted after Halle Bailey was cast as Ariel in the new live-action Little Mermaid.
This is a common occurrence with actors of color, and it’s a pattern that needs to be broken. Many stars have gotten support from their superiors, co-stars, and friends, but some have gotten no support at all and were left to fend for themselves amongst the sea of death threats.
From Riverdale stars to DC characters, these actors have bravely spoken out about the racism they faced amid their casting announcements. And it needs to be talked about more. See which actors have faced racist backlash over being cast in different roles.
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Francesca Amewudah-Rivers
Francesca Amewudah-Rivers has recently been cast as Juliet in a recent theater production of Romeo & Juliet alongside Tom Holland. The internet made a range of horrifically racist comments about the casting, and so much so that the company making the production, Jamie Lloyd Company, released a statement on Twitter.
They said “the online abuse must stop,” adding that “Following the announcement of our Romeo & Juliet cast, there has been a barrage of deplorable racial abuse online directed towards a member of our company. This must stop. We are working with a remarkable group of artists. We insist that they are free to create work without facing online harassment.”
We know she’s going to rock the role, and we hope the trolls online back on as soon as possible
Nico Parker
For the upcoming live-action How To Train Your Dragon, Nico Parker was cast for the role of Astrid, a female Viking warrior and love interest to the lead. With the news dropping on May 30, many people are giving her the same treatment Halle Bailey received, and it’s as ludicrous as you’d expect.
Halle Bailey
Back in 2019, Chloe x Halle singer Halle Bailey snagged the lead role in the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, and Twitter had an all-out war. There was a slew of racist Internet comments, saying that Ariel is supposed to be White, etc. But Halle didn’t let the negativity get to her, per People. “I feel like I’m dreaming, and I’m just grateful, and I don’t pay attention to the negativity. I just feel like this role was something bigger than me and greater and it’s going to be beautiful. I’m just so excited to be a part of it.”
Kelly Marie Tran
When Kelly Marie Tran got the role of a lifetime as Rose in the newest Star Wars trilogy, all should’ve been well with the star. But instead of being on Cloud 9, she went “down a spiral of self-hate” due to all the racist harassment she received on social media. In an essay she penned for the New York Times, she detailed how the racist harassment was getting to her, “It wasn’t their words, it’s that I started to believe them,” she said. “Their words seemed to confirm what growing up as a woman and a person of color already taught me: that I belonged in margins and spaces, valid only as a minor character in their lives and stories.”
Moses Ingram
Another Star Wars star who received racist backlash for their role is none other than Obi-Wan Kenobi star Moses Ingram. She went to Instagram to voice her anger and sandess over the racist taunts, saying, “There’s nothing anybody can do about this. There’s nothing anybody can do to stop this hate. And so, I’ve questioned what my purpose is in even being here in front of you saying that this is happening…I don’t really know.”
Lucasfilm stood up for her multiple times, including on Twitter, where they wrote, “We are proud to welcome Moses Ingram to the Star Wars family and excited for Reva’s story to unfold. If anyone intends to make her feel in any way unwelcome, we have only one thing to say: we resist.”
Jodie Turner-Smith
Much to Jodie Turner-Smith’s surprise, she received a lot of backlash once she was cast as Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII. But she didn’t let it get to her, continuing her pursuit of trying to give more depth to the tormented character. “I did know it would be something that people felt very passionately about, either in a positive or a negative way, because Anne is a human in history who people feel very strongly about,” she said to Glamour UK. “More than anything, I wanted to tell the human story at the centre of all of this.”
John Boyega
John Boyega was another actor who faced racism when cast in his leading role in Star Wars. The bullying got so bad that it reportedly soured his feelings about the legendary franchise. He told GQ UK, “It makes you angry with a process like that. It makes you much more militant; it changes you. Because you realize, ‘I got given this opportunity but I’m in an industry that wasn’t even ready for me.’ Nobody else in the cast had people saying they were going to boycott the movie because [they were in it]. Nobody else had the uproar and death threats sent to their Instagram DMs and social media, saying, ‘Black this and black that and you shouldn’t be a Stormtrooper.’”
Leah Jeffries
Remember when everyone was angry when Alexandra Daddario’s Annabeth in Percy Jackson had brown hair instead of blonde like the books? Well, a bunch of people freaked out when Leah Jeffries was announced as Annabeth in the upcoming Percy Jackson series.
She received a lot of backlash on Twitter from those who said a Black actress shouldn’t have been cast as a character that was depicted as white. But both Daddario and author Rick Riordan defended the rising star.
Candice Patton
When Candice Patton was cast as Arrowverse’s Iris West for The Flash, racist viewers said many hurtful things, and her employer reportedly did nothing to stop it. On The Open Up Podcast, she reflected on the lack of support, saying, “It’s a dangerous place to be in when you’re one of the first, and you’re facing backlash for it, and there’s no help. Now, people understand a little better, and they understand how fans can be racist, especially in the genre, and misogynistic. But at the time, it was kind of like: ‘Yeah, that’s how fans are, but whatever.’”
Ashleigh Murray
Ashleigh Murray’s experience while playing Josie McCoy for Riverdale (and later Katy Keene) was overall a great time, except for the racist viewers. “With Josie, she’s originally white in the comics, and so was [fellow Pussycat] Melody [Asha Bromfield]. And we all ended up coming as an all-black group,” Ashleigh recalled for Comicbook. “When I actually was testing for it, my aunt asked me ‘How are you going to deal with it, if you book this? How are you going to handle people having an issue with it?’ And I was like, ‘We’ll just worry about it when it comes.'”
She added, “[People] were like ‘Just don’t even go on the Internet. Don’t check social media.’ And I have seen people say some really unfortunate things, but there was so much happiness and gratitude and support outside of that negativity, that it kinda outweighed it. And now it’s just white noise.”
Kat Graham
Vampire Diaries star Kat Graham has been open about the challenging time she had on the hit show, constantly facing racist comments attacking the fact that she’s a Black Jewish actress. “I will say that I was fortunate in a lot of ways because if I ever felt anything — at the time Mark Pedowitz, who is still the president of The CW, who’s also Jewish, he was a really great ear for me,” she said to Entertainment Tonight. “I will focus on the positive and people who really had my back and helped me understand what I needed to do and how I could support them in elevating the narrative of being young, Black, female in Hollywood.”
Noma Dumezweni
Chances are, you remember when Noma Dumezweni was cast as Hermione in the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play, and you remember the outrage certain people felt on Twitter. “It’s ignorance. It drives me crazy. It’s a limitation. Because this is absolutely a different form,” Dumezweni said to Sunday Times. “Every girl, every walk of life, every race, gets it: ‘How do we go into the world?’ I want to go into the world the way she does. Am I brave enough to go through what she does?”
