Blink Twice star Naomi Ackie played Jannah in 2019's Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, a character it's widely believed was meant to be revealed as Lando Calrissian's lost daughter before reshoots changed that.
At the time Ackie was cast, actors like John Boyega and Kelly Marie-Tran had faced racist abuse online, with the latter, in particular, becoming a target for fans upset by the creative direction of 2017's Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter about heading into a Galaxy Far, Far Away, Ackie started by revealing how shocked she was by the scale of The Rise of Skywalker. "I cried on the first day because I couldn’t get the horse to land in the right spot for a stunt," she recalled.
As stressful as that experience might have been, Ackie had made a decision about her Star Wars role before the casting announcement went public: she deleted her social media presence.
"I had heard that anyone of color would get wrapped up in some racist shit," she says, referencing the backlash faced by Boyega for being a "Black Stormtrooper" years earlier. "I didn’t want to have a place for them to come with their comments."
As a result, the backlash Ackie expected didn't happen and she restored her account before pulling the plug on it for unrelated reasons.
"They did some sort of magic thing where I instantly got the checkmark [verification] and all these followers, and then Star Wars came out, and it was fine and I sat with that for a bit," the actor explained. "But then I eventually found myself scrolling too much, comparing myself to other people and becoming jealous, sad and depressed."
"I started putting stuff on my page that was attention-seeking. Trying to be funny on my Insta stories, or trying to be hot, trying to be a thirst trap from my [frick]ing house share that I lived in with three other guys. It was like, what the [frick], this is not working at all and I don’t feel good about it. I eventually realized it was time to get rid of it properly."
Ackie is fortunate to have avoided online racism, though the fact Jannah was such a minor character may have helped. In contrast, both Obi-Wan Kenobi star Moses Ingram and The Acolyte's Amandla Stenberg have faced abuse and trolling on social media. In the former's case, Ewan McGregor even took to social media to defend his co-star.
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