Amandla Stenberg has broken her silence on the cancellation of The Acolyte, following what she called a “rampage of vitriol” from fans.
After Lucasfilm previously opted not to proceed with a second season of the Star Wars spin-off series, the actress explained why the show’s abrupt cancelation was “not a huge shock” for her when it was announced this month.
“There are many folks out there that I want to acknowledge and I want to show appreciation and love and support for, so that’s why I’m hopping on here to talk about this, which is that our Star Wars show has been canceled,” Stenberg said Wednesday on her Instagram Story.
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“And I’m gonna be transparent and say that it’s not a huge shock for me,” she added. “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.”
Stenberg described the attacks as “hyper-conservative bigotry and vitriol, prejudiced hatred and hateful language” directed at the cast, which also includes Lee Jung-jae, Charlie Barnett, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jodie Turner-Smith, Manny Jacinto, Dafne Keen and Rebecca Henderson.
“And this really affected me when I first got the job,” Stenberg continued. “Even though I anticipated it happening, it’s not something you can fully understand what it feels like until it’s happening to you.
“However, I feel like I’ve kinda moved through those feelings in various ways, including being vocal about it myself. For me, it just became a situation where there was no option but for me to honor my sense of ethics and my belief system and my value system while being in this very unique position,” she explained.
The actress previously released the single ‘Discourse‘ on Juneteenth this year, in response to “intolerable racism” she’s experienced.
Stenberg explained Wednesday that she had “to honor my value system by being vocal, even within the context of working for Disney and working within the large, massive IP that is Star Wars.”
“On that topic, I just have to say it has been an incredible honor and dream for me to be in this universe,” added Stenberg in part. “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 invested in 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.”
The Acolyte is a mystery-thriller set in the final days of the High Republic era. A former Padawan (Stenberg) reunites with her Jedi Master (Jung-jae) to investigate a series of crimes, but the forces they confront are more sinister than anticipated.
Jung-jae has said he was “quite surprised personally” about the show’s cancelation, praising creator Leslye Headland‘s writing.
“I thought that she was a great writer and director who was very talented in the storytelling, as well as creating characters and creating meaningful structures within the story,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “So I was actually personally really looking forward to watching a season 2 with her at the helm.”