Amandla Stenberg Claims Acolyte Cancellation Due to Bigotry

Television

In a now unavailable Instagram story, actor Amandla Stenberg spoke out on The Acolyte’s cancellation on Disney+. Stenberg portrayed twin protagonists Mae and Osha, who were pulled to opposing sides of the Force and split up at the age of eight. Taking place a century before the Star Wars prequels, The Acolyte follows the girls as they confront the past and reckon with the Jedi and Sith ideologies. The Acolyte was poorly received by fans and generally accepted by critics. Showrunner Lesley Headland alienated Star Wars fans before the show even aired, saying The Acolyte wouldn’t be kind to the Jedi, would be the gayest Star Wars ever, and talking about her own sympathy for the Sith. Stenberg goes on to say this of the show’s unceremonious end (via Variety):

“I’m going to be transparent and say it’s not a huge shock for me. 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.”

“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. However, I feel like I’ve kind of moved through those feelings in various ways, including being vocal about it myself. … It just became inarguable for me, at a certain point, that in order to continue to be myself, I would have to honor my value system by being vocal even in the context of working for Disney.”

“It has been an incredible honor and dream for me to be in this universe. Of course, I’m very sad about the show being canceled. … I just want to let those people know out there who supported us in that way, and supported us vocally — despite and 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.”

There’s a lot to talk about here, but I’ll start with the hateful vitriol. There has been a lot of anger towards The Acolyte since the beginning; I will agree with that. And honestly, for a long time, I thought it was unwarranted. I genuinely thought The Acolyte sounded cool, a great new concept to tackle in the Star Wars universe. Finally, a new time period with new characters. Well, sort of. However, the people behind The Acolyte were poking the bear long before the show came out. I don’t have any problem with Stenberg as a person or an actor, but my problem is with Headland and the show itself. I don’t have any idea how involved Headland was with Harvey Weinstein’s bad behavior, but hiring her was a strange move. Regardless of what she did or didn’t know, the optics aren’t good. And it surprises me that Disney went with someone who would challenge their wholesome image, especially when that person is critical of Star Wars, George Lucas, and the Jedi. I don’t have ill will towards the actors or most of the crew on The Acolyte, but it is a bad show, and I think it was made in bad faith. But at the end of the day, Disney and Lucasfilm canceled the show because the numbers were terrible. The financial benefit wasn’t there, so they won’t continue such an expensive series.

But what do you think? Does Amandla Stenberg have a point, was The Acolyte just trash, or does the truth lie somewhere in the middle? Let us know in the comments!