In a new interview with Glamour Magazine, Jodie Turner-Smith has spoken out against Disney not protecting the cast of The Acolyte stating “it’s disappointing to feel like your studio is not having your back in a very public-facing way”.
Power was something Jodie found in Star Wars series The Acolyte, released over the summer and set a century before Luke Skywalker and Rey picked up their lightsabers. The show’s director, Kogonada, offered her the role following a conversation they had at the Cannes premiere of After Yang, a sci-fi drama the pair worked on together pre-pandemic. Jodie had given birth to her daughter the year prior in April 2020, and shared her regrets that she wasn’t able to bring her knowledge as a new mother to the role. The conversation led to an opportunity in a galaxy far, far away – indeed, she had never starred in anything of that scale. In the show, Jodie appears in flashbacks as Mother Aniseya, the leader of a matriarchal coven of space witches, naturally.
When Jodie met The Acolyte co-star Amandla Stenberg, who does double duty as the lead, playing both of Aniseya’s twin daughters, Amandla gave her an essay she had penned on her approach to the characters – their motivations, their inner lives. It was a gift. “I’ve never worked with anybody who’s handed me an essay on their character. The Virgo in me was just like, ‘Yass, I’m living for this!’” she says, before revealing why that joy was short-lived. “She put so much care and thought and love into that, and it’s disappointing to feel like your studio is not having your back in a very public-facing way,” she adds, alluding to how she felt Disney didn’t support Amandla at the time.
The show was unceremoniously cancelled, allegedly due to low ratings – but in the weeks leading up to its season finale, the cast faced relentless torrents of racist abuse online from so-called fans who couldn’t handle a Black actor leading a Star Wars series. In a video posted to her Instagram story, Amandla addressed the cancellation, noting that since the show was announced in 2020, she and the cast have experienced a “rampage of hyper-conservative bigotry, vitriol, prejudiced hatred and hateful language”. It’s an infuriating cycle: actors of colour are cast in Star Wars projects and are immediately made vulnerable to vicious bigotry. (John Boyega in particular has been outspoken about his experience with racism while part of the Star Wars sequel trilogy.)
“They’ve got to stop doing this thing where they don’t say anything when people are getting f***ing 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.”
Read the interview in full here, and stream The Acolyte on Disney+ now.
