‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ Star Moses Ingram Shares Racist Messages She Received on Instagram Story
Moses Ingram isn’t getting the full Star Wars fan welcome she deserves. In a recent Instagram post, the Obi-Wan Kenobi star revealed that she’s been receiving racist messages and shared her response to the unwarranted hate.
Moses Ingram shares some of the racist messages she received over her ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ role
The new Star Wars series, Obi-Wan Kenobi, follows Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) in the days of Darth Vader’s (Hayden Christensen) rise. Ingram joins the cast as Reva, a powerful Inquisitor who is hunting Obi-Wan and other Jedis under Anakin/Darth Vader’s orders.
The actor — who received a Primetime Emmy nomination for her performance in The Queen’s Gambit — is being celebrated by fans for her villainous new role. But unfortunately, some have sent Ingram vile messages, using racist slurs and suggesting she was a “diversity hire.”
“There’s nothing anybody can do about this,” the Yale Drama School graduate said in a video posted on Instagram. “There’s nothing anybody can do to stop this hate. I question my purposes in even being here in front of you saying that this is happening. I don’t really know.”
The ‘Star Wars’ Twitter account defends Moses Ingram and sends a message to hateful fans
After Ingram revealed the hateful messages she received, the Star Wars Twitter account shared support for the actor. And they had a message for racist Obi-Wan Kenobi fans.
“We are proud to welcome Moses Ingram to the Star Wars family and excited for Reva’s story to unfold,” the tweet read. “If anyone intends to make her feel in any way unwelcome, we have only one thing to say: we resist.”
“There are more than 20 million sentient species in the Star Wars galaxy,” the Star Wars account added. “Don’t choose to be a racist.”
This isn’t the first time a ‘Star Wars’ star has received racist messages
Ingram isn’t the first Star Wars star to receive hate-fueled comments. John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran, who appeared in the last three franchise movies, also spoke publicly about some of the racist fan messages they encountered.
“Their words seemed to confirm what growing up as a woman and a person of color already taught me: that I belonged in margins and spaces, valid only as a minor character in their lives and stories,” Tran wrote in an essay for the New York Times. “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.”
In an interview with The Independent, Ingram revealed that Lucasfilm executives warned her about potential racist backlash before the premiere of Obi-Wan Kenobi. “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,'” the actor said.
Speaking to the show’s cast and story, Moses added, “Obi-Wan is going to bring the most diversity I think we’ve ever seen in the galaxy before. To me, it’s long overdue. If you’ve got talking droids and aliens, but no people of color, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s 2022, you know. So we’re just at the beginning of that change. But I think to start that change is better than never having started it.”
