The Acolyte star Amandla Stenberg took to Instagram stories this evening to give her thoughts on the cancellation of the Disney Plus show and the decision not to pick it up for further seasons, discussing the external forces that weighed heavily on her before, during and after the show and making sure to thank the positive – and overwhelmingly large – portion of the fandom who welcomed her and invested themselves in the story told onscreen.
“It’s not a huge shock for me. 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.
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, 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.
It has been an incredible honor and dream for me to be in this universe, 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, 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.
Amandla also made special mention of showrunner Leslye Headland.
I just f****** love that bitch. 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.
I also just want to thank everybody who watched it. 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.”
We discuss the decision not to pick up The Acolyte for future seasons on Friday’s special episode of Making Tracks, landing at 7.00pm on Fantha Tracks Radio.
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