UPDATE, 6/1/2022, 12:05 a.m. ET: After this story was published, the Star Wars account put out “A personal message from Ewan McGregor” in which the actor says in a video post: “I just want to say as the leading actor on the series, as the executive producer on the series, that we stand with Moses, we love Moses, and if you send her bullying messages, you’re no ‘Star Wars’ fan, in my mind.”
Haven’t we seen this enough? Yet again, a new Star Wars performer has been subject to a flurry of racist backlash online. After the debut of Obi-Wan Kenobi last Friday, star Moses Ingram has had to spend the weekend shooting down trolls on social media instead of celebrating her new Disney+ series.
On her Instagram story, Ingram shared a couple of hurtful messages she received from strangers. “You’re days are numbered,” one user sent the actress. Another reads: “You suck loser,” and then, “You’re a diversity hire and you won’t be loved or remembered for this acting role.”
In Obi-Wan, Ingram stars as Reva Sevander, aka “The Third Sister,” an Inquisitor who bows to Darth Vader—essentially, she’s a villain. While we’re not programmed to like villains (and Reva is especially vicious, targeting a young Princess Leia), that hasn’t stopped fans from cuddling up to iconic characters like Vader, Kylo Ren, and Darth Maul.
But Star Wars has a brutal history of racism toward its stars of color. Ahmed Best, who starred as the controversial (yet so, so cheerful) Jar Jar Binks in the prequels, was nearly driven to suicide by online vitriol. In more recent years, John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran—who has been completely forced offline—had to deal with a complete trainwreck of racist online trolls.
Ingram opened up about dealing with these folks in another Instagram story in which she spoke directly to the camera, saying there are “hundreds” of hate messages sitting in her unread inbox.
“There’s nothing anybody can do to stop this hate,” Ingram said. “The thing that bothers me is this feeling that I’ve had inside of myself—which no one has told me—but this feeling that I’ve just got to shut up and take it. That I’ve just kind of got to bear it. I’m not built like that.”
But she shouldn’t have to shut up and take it, should she? The folks behind Star Wars—Kathleen Kennedy, George Lucas, Disney!—should be backing their star as much as possible, advocating for her role in the universe. The best the company could do was share a mere tweet about their star, hoping that would be enough to fan the flames of their racist fanbase.
“We are proud to welcome Moses Ingram to the Star Wars family and excited for Reva’s story to unfold. If anyone intends to make her feel in any way unwelcome, we have only one thing to say: we resist,” they shared early this morning. “There are more than 20 million sentient species in the Star Wars galaxy, don’t choose to be a racist.”
Fans wasted no time calling the franchise out on their BS, rehashing previous racism regarding Boyega and Tran in The Force Awakens and beyond. For one, Star Wars decided to remove Boyega from TFA’s Chinese poster. Simply put, Star Wars has a rocky track record when it comes to supporting its POC cast members.
“Watching a studio that coddled toxic fans for decades in the name of profit try to put the lid back on the jar with a tweet… it’s always cute!” shared The Daily Beast’s Laura Bradley.
With actors like Diego Luna and Rosario Dawson set to lead the upcoming Star Wars series Star Wars: Andor on Disney+, Star Wars certainly needs to get its act together soon, starting with some more direct messaging to its racist, spiteful fanbase.
New episodes of Obi-Wan debut weekly, and Ingram deserves a round of applause for each new villainous storyline she brings to the franchise. Didn’t we just welcome back Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader with loving arms? What’s the difference?
