The Acolyte star Amandla Stenberg opened up about the death threats that she received for starring in the hit Star Wars series.
Since its premiere last month, the series has received backlash from some fans as they accuse it of being "woke" for exploring diverse characters and allegedly changing the canon with some of its story choices.
They have also attempted to do review bombing on various audience-rating websites. However, some of them ended up getting misfired as they mistakenly attached a different project instead.
Amandla Stenberg Gets Candid on the Death Threats She Received for The Acolyte
During her recent appearance on The View, Stenberg was asked to weigh in on the backlash that The Acolyte has received from the toxic side of the Star Wars fandom.
She admitted that the situation has been difficult for her, and she's been receiving death threats over starring in the series.
"It’s been very painful to me. It's not something that I think you can emotionally prepare for," The Acolyte star said.
"I welcome criticism of the show when it comes to storytelling or performance. But when it comes to death threats, horrific, violent racist language, it’s unacceptable to me."
Stenberg added, "And I’ve had to think really deep and hard about when you display discipline and when you display honor. And I guess what I mean by that is when do you decide to utilize discipline to not engage in a reactive way to hatred and when do you decide to engage in honor by honoring your values and your belief system."
In response to the backlash, Stenberg released an original song titled "Discourse" on her social media accounts. It served as her "diss track" for the toxic fans.
"In this case, I decided that was the most important thing to me, to be vocal because I think that silence can send a message as well, and inaction can be very dangerous," she explained.
"And so, well, I dropped a diss track called 'Discourse' and it really is about, of course, what I’ve been experiencing, but it’s also about the divisiveness of the culture and how difficult for all of us now to navigate information in this new era. It’s so difficult to tell what is true, you know, online."
While you are free to disagree with the creative choices of The Acolyte, sending death threats and hate to the cast and crew is intolerable and it is never an acceptable behavior for anyone to do. Hopefully, proper measures will be taken by the platforms to avoid issues like this from happening.
New episodes of The Acolyte premiere every Tuesday night on Disney+.
What do you think of Stenberg's remarks? Let us know in the comments!
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