Amandla Stenberg Speaks Up about Acolyte cancelation

“I’m going to be transparent and say it’s not a huge shock for me,” Stenberg begins in the video. “There has been a rampage of abuse that we had 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.”

“This affected me when I first got the job. Because it’s just not something — 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 said. “However, I feel like I’ve moved through those feelings in various ways, including being vocal. … It just became inarguable for me, at a certain point, that to continue to be myself, I would have to honor my value system by being vocal even in the context of working for Disney.”

“It has been an incredible honor and dream for me to be in this universe,” they added. “Of course, I’m sad about the show being canceled. … I want to let those people out there who supported us in that way and supported us vocally — despite and in the face of all of the abuse 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.”