Tenoch Huerta, ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ Star, Accused of Being ‘Sexual Predator’

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever actor Tenoch Huerta is being accused of sexual assault. According to the LA Times, musician Maria Elena Rios accused the Namor actor of being a “sexual predator,” detailing her allegations on Twitter. Representatives for Huerta and Disney didn’t respond to requests for comment by The Times.

Rios opened up about her experience after the Mexican activist organization, Poder Prieto, dropped a podcast episode featuring Rios on social media. Huerta is a spokesperson for the group that pushes the media and media figures to combat racism. As The Times details, Rios claims the organization shared the podcast episode without her consent, alleging the group also made her work for free and never compensated her while she was a member.

While Poder Prieto claimed they could not pay the musician for “something it did not produce” and insisted they didn’t publish the episode and only recommended it online. They also did not address her claims about Huerta, which did not stop Rios from discussing them.

“It’s very difficult to talk about the emotional abuse and the abuse of power of a sexual predator who is loved around the world for playing a character in a movie such as Tenoch Huerta,” Rios wrote on Twitter on Saturday. She also seemed to indicate that Huerta allegedly sexually assaulted her at one point.

She also claimed Poder Prieto was protecting Huerta from the allegations and received very clear directives on her relationship with the group, adding she made it “very clear” with the group that they had no permission from her camp.

Huerta has been involved in a few high-profile roles aside from Namor in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, including Narcos: Mexico on Netflix and The Forever Purge. His MCU casting was praised by onlookers when it was announced, with the star echoing these sentiments in an interview in November.

“This is the first superhero with an Indigenous background, a Mesoamerican background,” Huerta told the LA Times. “It’s a brown-skinned guy. This ancient culture is in his roots. And he speaks like me. We are making history. I told them, ‘Let’s do something to be proud of.’”