Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi actress Moses Ingram shared screenshots of racist messages she received after the first two episodes of the Disney+ series were released on Friday. Some of the messages included the N-word. Lucasfilm later voiced support for Ingram, who plays the villain Reva Sevander in the new series.
Ingram shared some of the disturbing and disgusting messages people have sent her since the Obi-Wan premiere on Instagram. One message said her “days are numbered,” while another one called her a “diversity hire.” After these screenshots, the Emmy nominee shared a video, noting that the messages lead her to “question my purpose in even being here in front of you saying that this is happening.” She noted there was “nothing anybody can do to stop this hate.”
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“The thing that bothers me is this feeling inside of myself, that no one has told me, but this feeling that I have to shut up and take it, that I have to grin and bear it,” Ingram continued, via The Hollywood Reporter. “And I’m not built like that. So, I wanted to come on and say thank you to the people who show up for me in the comments and the places that I’m not going to put myself. And to the rest of y’all, y’all weird.”
Lucasfilm later published a statement to show the studio has Ingram’s back. “There are more than 20 million sentient species in the Star Wars galaxy, don’t choose to be a racist,” the statement reads. “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.”
Earlier this month, Ingram told The Independent that Lucasfilm told her she would face backlash just for being a person of color in the Star Wars franchise. “It was something that Lucasfilm actually got in front of, and said, ‘This is a thing that, unfortunately, likely will happen. But we are here to help you; you can let us know when it happens,’” Ingram said.
The Queen’s Gambit star went on to praise Obi-Wan director Deborah Chow for “putting the proper systems in place so I feel safe as we do the work.” However, she noted that there will “always be pockets of hate” and she has “no problem with the block button.”
Racists have bombarded new Star Wars actors with disgusting comments ever since Disney began overseeing the franchise. The Last Jedi star Kelly Marie Tran wrote an essay for The New York Times in 2018 about her experience. “Their words reinforced a narrative I had heard my whole life: that I was ‘other,’ that I didn’t belong, that I wasn’t good enough, simply because I wasn’t like them,” Tran who also worked with Disney on Raya and the Last Dragon, wrote. “And that feeling, I realize now, was, and is, shame, a shame for the things that made me different, a shame for the culture from which I came from. And to me, the most disappointing thing was that I felt it at all.”
Tran ended her essay by noting that she refused to let the comments stop her from working. “You might know me as Kelly. I am the first woman of color to have a leading role in a Star Wars movie,” she wrote. “I am the first Asian woman to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair. My real name is Loan. And I am just getting started.”
