Lead actor Amandla Stenberg has weighed in on the cancellation of The Acolyte, but it seems that they saw it coming.
The Acolyte’s cancellation has stirred up a lot of emotions. The series seemed doomed from the beginning as a section of the Star Wars fandom review bombed the series on Rotten Tomatoes.
We were quite critical of the show, but also enjoyed parts of it immensely and were disappointed to learn all those intriguing mysteries that the finale left us with would never be resolved. We reported earlier this week that the cancellation was due to dwindling viewership numbers. Not enough people watched the extremely expensive show, leading Disney to axe it.
Amandla Stenberg, who played Mae and Osha, the series’ protagonist and antagonist respectively, has now taken to Instagram to speak on the matter.
“I’m going to be transparent and say it’s not a huge shock for me,” Stenberg says in a video in her Instagram stories, as picked up by Variety.
“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.”
The Acolyte, one of the most diverse entries into the Star Wars franchise, was met with criticism and outright hatred from the very start, something Stenberg says “‘really affected me when I first got the job”.
She 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.” Stenberg also said it was important for her to speak out against the attacks “to honour my sense of ethics and my belief system and my value system while being in this very unique position.”
Stenberg seems to still have had a great time working on the show and they’re proud of it.
“It has been an incredible honor and dream for me to be in this universe,” they added. “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 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.”
