Star Wars: The Acolyte has received massive hate to the point that Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy has broken her silence about it. Almost everything about the show has become controversial, from its timeline to being created by an openly queer person Leslye Headland, even resulting in an alleged review-bomb campaign. As this is Star Wars, many react to its casting of non-white males, with lead star Amandla Stenberg facing racism issues. So, to celebrate Juneteenth, a holiday celebrated on June 19 to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved people in the US, Stenberg addresses the racist backlash with a music video.
In what looks like an industry-first, Stenberg has written and released a song, complete with a music video and dance moves, to respond to the racist backlash against The Acolyte. The actress shared the post on Instagram and called out everyone who was flooding her with “intolerable racism.”
“Happy Juneteenth,” she captioned her post with a black heart emoji. “And to those who are flooding me with intolerable racism—since it took me 72 hours on my laptop to make this song and video, u got 72 hours to respond. and I expect choreo!!”
The untitled song directly addresses her “white people crying” comment and even mentions woke being used as an insult. She also cites Childish Gambino and how the singer-actor puts the “people recognizing bigotry” in the zeitgeist. The singer-actress then calls out the journalists who spread divisiveness and mine metrics and data, forgetting their job to deliver the truth and giving up their ethics for money and views.
“We so bored don’t f*ck with yo discourse,” the song’s refrain continuously playing while Stenberg dances with the word “Discourse” flashing over her head.
The Backlash Star Wars: The Acolyte and Amandla Stenberg Experience
The Acolyte has been experiencing a huge backlash even before its release. Aside from being created by a female showrunner, Headland is also the first queer person to help a live-action Star Wars project. Some also complain about its diverse cast, which focuses on female characters and Stenberg playing the dual role of Mae and Osha. Of course, many also react to the story’s direction, set during the High Republic era, a timeline yet to be explored in live-action.
In addition, the uproar reached an intense level after the third episode introduced Mother Aniseya (Jodie Turner-Smith) and Mother Koril (Margarita Levieva), who some accused of being “lesbian space witches.” And the clamor didn’t just stop there. The haters didn’t let Headland’s playful answer to the question about the show being the “gayest Star Wars” pass and it quickly drew criticism and went viral.
As for Stenberg, her 2018 comment about her movie The Hate U Give by George Tillman Jr. had been taken out of context. In her appearance on The Daily Show, she told host Trevor Noah, “white people crying actually was the goal” of the film, which some conservative circles mistakenly referred to The Acolyte.
Evidently, there’s a growing hate surrounding The Acolyte. However, Headland aims to feature new perspectives in the Star Wars universe by telling a different story and featuring a diverse cast. And though many express their hate toward Stenberg, as seen in the comments on her post, it can’t be denied that she’s doing her best to give life to her characters as Osha and Mae.
The first four episodes of The Acolyte are available on Disney+, while new episodes are set to release every Tuesday.
