In what’s likely an industry first, a TV show’s star has written and released a song and music video — complete with dance moves — in response to racist backlash against the show. Disney+’s actress Amandla Stenberg posted the track on Instagram on Wednesday and captioned the post: “Happy Juneteenth 🖤. And to those who are flooding me with intolerable racism — since it took me 72 hours on my laptop to make this song and video, u got 72 hours to respond.
and I expect choreo!” Before we get to the song’s lyrics, here’s some context for those who haven’t been following uproar: The latest Disney+ show is from Leslye Headland, the first openly queer person to helm a live-action Star Wars project. The show stars Stenberg in a dual lead role as identical twins Osha and Mae Aniseya in a story set 100 years before . The project earned positive reviews from critics out of the gate, with an 85 percent positive score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Since its June 4 release, however, there have been allegations of review bombing, as its audience score has plummeted to only 14 percent — lower than the infamous . There has been some earnest debate among fans over things like canon consistency issues, but last week, the show’s backlash reached an intense level after the third episode introduced a coven of characters that have been described ( ) as “lesbian space witches.” There was also uproar over Headland giving a playful answer to a junket question where a reporter ask.
