Amandla Stenberg Wasn’t Shocked by The Acolyte’s Cancellation

Amandla Stenberg, double star of the recent Star Wars Disney+ Series The Acolytetook to social media this week to discuss her thoughts on the show’s cancellation — and, well, after everything that’s happened, she wasn’t surprised.

“It’s not a huge shock to me,” she said on Instagram Stories. “Of course, I live in the bubble of my own reality, but for those who don’t know, we’ve been dealing with a wave of vitriol since the show was announced — when it was still a concept and no one had even seen it. That’s when we started to experience a wave of hyper-conservative bigotry and vitriol and bias and hate and hateful language directed at us. And you know that really affected me when I first got the job because it’s just not something, even though I expected it to happen, it’s not something you can fully understand until it happens to you.”

Created by Leslye Headland, The Acolyte starred Stenberg as Mae and Osha, Force-born twins whose very existence throws a wrench in the balance between the Jedi and the Sith. The story is set during the High Republic, hundreds of years before any other story has been told on screen. Star Wars story, the series was ruthless with the way it treated its characters, its thoughts on Star Wars, and more. It was always meant to be divisive, but despite that, Stenberg felt like the show was always at odds with that.

“I don’t lose sight of the fact that the way these events have unfolded is also due to the hyper-division of the times we live in, fueled, I would say at this point, by echo chambers of thought and algorithms that reinforce our biases,” Stenberg continued. “And I think that applies to everyone, but I think in a particular category of people it manifests itself in a great fear of what changes. A great hatred for everything that is different. And I would challenge all of us and challenge myself to continue to question what I digest and to think critically about what shapes it.”

Still, Stenberg said she was grateful to have been a part of the experience and to the fans who watched it. “It’s been an incredible honor and a dream come true for me to be in this universe,” she said. “While I’m obviously very sad that the show is canceled and that we can’t offer more to the people who are invested in it, I still feel a lot of lightness and joy around the fact that I got to experience it and that people loved it and were so receptive.”

“I’ve gone through so many different versions of fan art, ship art, fan theories, and other things that have just been beautiful and filled my heart with joy,” she said. “And I just want to let those people know that have supported us in that way, that have vocally supported us in the face of all the vitriol that we’ve received, and the kind of targeted attacks that we’ve received from the alt-right, that they are deeply loved and appreciated, and that has made this work worth it for me and made all the hard stuff worth it for me.”

She also thanked the show’s creator, Leslye Headlund. “I love that bitch,” Stenberg said. “She’s one of the best people in the world. I think she’s incredibly talented and unique, and I’ll love her forever, and I’ll love this experience with her forever.”

And of course, Stenberg shared her thoughts with fans. “I also want to thank everyone who watched the show,” she said. “Thank you for being so loving, so supportive, so enthusiastic, so geeky, and so awesome. I’m going to be thinking about this for a long time.”

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