'The Acolyte's Jodie Turner-Smith Gives Defiant Rebuke to Racist Fans

It’s no secret that I loved The Acolyte. I was fully seduced by Darth Grillz in his many shirtless forms. Leslye Headland delivered a bold series that was a shot in the arm that Star Wars desperately needed. Unfortunately, the toxic hive of scum and villainy calling itself the “true fans” felt otherwise, and The Acolyte became the first live-action Star Wars series to be officially canceled. (Technically, The Book of Boba Fett was quietly knifed off-screen.)

To be clear, the show had low viewership and cost a butt-ton of money. I absolutely get the business decision behind pulling the plug, but that never fails to stop someone from flailing into the comments and acting like I don’t acknowledge this fact in every single article, which I do. So, I’ll say it again in bold print: The numbers weren’t there.

However, those numbers didn’t happen in a vacuum. For starters, The Acolyte arrived after a wave of lackluster series like Ahsoka and The Mandalorian Season 3. The former was blatant nostalgia porn for fans who obsessively watched the cartoons while the latter was the biggest sign yet that the Mando-verse (where all of the Star Wars eggs are currently sitting) is creatively bankrupt.

Then there was the “fan” backlash to The Acolyte, and I use sarcastic quotes because I mean racist. The racist backlash. The series dared to have a woman of color as its lead, so before a single scene was even shot, it was already targeted by YouTube shit-widgets screaming about wokeness and declaring it “the worst Star Wars show ever.” Their frothing opinions were inescapable on social media, and it’s hard to argue that didn’t play a part in depressing viewership. The mediocrity of the Disney+ series in general is no doubt the biggest culprit, but again, let’s not pretend the racist backlash didn’t have an affect.

Which brings us to Jodie Turner-Smith, who went off on Disney for basically throwing the cast to the wolves and not doing more to push back against the racism plaguing the franchise.

Via Glamour:

“They’ve got to stop doing this thing where they don’t say anything when people are getting fucking dog-piled on the internet with racism and bullshit,” Jodie says of Disney’s lack of response to The Acolyte’s reception. “It’s just not fair to not say anything. It’s really unfair.”

“It would just be nice if the people that have all the money” - whether that be Disney or any studio - “were showing their support and putting their feet down,” she proposes. “Say this is unacceptable: ‘You’re not a fan if you do this.’ Make a really big statement and just see if any money leaves. I bet you it won’t, because people of colour, and especially Black people, make up a very large percentage of buying power. They might find that it’s actually more lucrative for them, but everyone’s using ‘woke’ like it’s a dirty word.”

Despite blasting Disney for dropping the ball, Turner-Smith offered a defiant ray of hope and a badass rebuke to the toxic fans.

“Opinions change. What’s in vogue changes. We’re gonna get there at some point, to that place where people stop having a stick up their arse about people of colour being a part of IPs that were created by white people. You know why?” she said. “Because we’re never going to f*cking stop participating.”

(Via Glamour)