Two Types Of People Actors Should Stop Listening To

When DC Universe’s short-lived streaming service dropped Titans on an unsuspecting DC fanbase I started to notice something I technically knew but didn’t really think about. Actors do not see adaptation roles the same way the fans do. It kind of makes sense. To them it’s another character to play or a chance to finally work with “that director” or “those actors” that they’ve always wanted to work with. They have no fealty to the source material. I can accept that.

What I can’t accept is attacking the fans of the source materials for the wrong reasons. Amandla Stemberg dropped that infamous “diss track” I won’t torment you folks with after the traditional Star Wars fans rejected The Acolyte. Just recently Milly Alcock, either concerning her Game Of Thrones character or the upcoming Supergirl portrayal, complained about having to accept fans “weird ownership over women’s bodies“, as if she’s preparing to blame sexism for her movie potentially failing the way race and gender have been blamed for every complaint at least since the all-women Ghostbusters reimagining. In each of these and many, many other cases it missed the point of the argument by fans and media critics who had nothing personal against the actors until they opened their mouths in an interview or typed something antagonistic on social media. I don’t mean the Mark Ruffalo or Rachel Ziegler stuff. They brought that onto themselves. I mean we weren’t complaining about the actors, and we even understood their defending their dream character types or just their regular paychecks and future aspects in the business.

Their real problem is that the people giving them those jobs are getting things wrong, our old SECCA palls. The snobs and elitists remake everything in their own image. The egotists think they should be praise for it. The corporations don’t understand what is making those properties potentially good, so they leave them in the hands of people who don’t care, including the activists. And the other four are more than happy to use activists as critic shields. “You don’t like it because you’re a bigot against the changes I made” rather than “we loved things the way they were and your change is going to really ruin things.” The current race swap of Severus Snape in the Harry Potter franchise turns ordinary bullies into the magical world’s KKK when really thinking about how that race change recontextualizes his character arc.

I’m starting to see a new problem with the actors pushing back against fans. Not (just) that they don’t care about the source material over what they really want to play or having a steady paycheck for at least one season if not more. It’s that they don’t know what the actual complaints are. I used to think that was willing ignorance, but now? Unless the actor is a major activist (actorvist?), it’s that they’re listening to the wrong people within their Hollywood bubble. Those people do not have the actors’ best interests, only their own. And only one of them is their boss.

base image: Memory Alpha wiki
information: TNG season 1 story bible

The bigger problem is that because actors don’t have time to read or watch all the criticisms about the production they’re working on, they don’t know what fans are really saying about the show or movie they’re working on. If there’s a complaint about “Black Snape”, it isn’t directed at Pappa Essedu, it’s directed as whomever hired him, who decided that Snape was the character to get race swapped to reach the quota necessary to get nominated for whatever award an HBO series would try to get. (Are the Cable ACE awards still in existence?) Because the activists had decided that only the most important characters to the story matter (despite the various awards shows still having a “best supporting actor/actress” category) and the only way a black character can matter is if they’re the most important possible, and they can’t get there without coddling handouts from the “good white people” (them), these changes occur. Essedu didn’t go and demand the Snape role. He was offered it by the casting director, who probably told him it was his “duty to the African-American community” or something to do it.

Until that announcement, even with some actors like John Lithgow not being British, nobody had any issues with the series remake of the Harry Potter books, unless they really hate J.K. Rowling that much. Interestingly Lithgow seems to be on the list despite taking the Dumbledore role while being a straight man playing a character Rowling made gay to be an “ally”. His recent series of pullbacks is because her stance on transgender people in women’s bathrooms or women’s sports is the only thing not in lockstep with the extreme left hivemind. (Even then it’s her feminist views and bad life experiences with men that led to her stance, but that’s all I’ll say on the issue because I don’t care. I only mention it because it’s annoyingly a factor in all this.) For reasons discussed in two separate videos this week, it was the people in charge, not the actors that bothered them.

Ground Zero for this trend is the 2016 all-girl reimagine of Ghostbusters. Fans complained about the quality of the story. leaving the original continuity out of it, having terrible humor, and the treatment the male version of Jeanine, a beloved character from the original movies and the animated spinoffs. Instead we had the actresses, especially Leslie Jones, insisting it was because the fans didn’t want to see women on screen in important roles…despite so much evidence to the contrary it made her look foolish. Jeanine pretty much became a back-up Ghostbuster in the shows. Fans still want a PROPER adaptation of Red Sonja or Supergirl. Adapting Tom King’s Supergirl is not that adaptation, and while I defend the 1984 movie, I’m in a minor perspective on that.

However, since Paul Feig made it work–or thinks he did–directors and even the writers have gotten to the point where race and gender swaps are as much about protecting themselves as making the “cool kids” happy. (Said “cool kids” never actually supporting their work with money, which is how the studios usually decide how to hire someone when they aren’t casting directors based on race and gender for those same award show rules.) The actors only hear from these directors about “oh, they’re totally against this because your (insert race, gender, sexual orientation, or some mix of the three here) and they’re bigots”, not “we hate that you changed a character we love or introduced a concept that makes no sense in the world despite being (insert race, gender, sexual orientation, or some mix of the three here) because it’s an insulting form of representation to us and we already loved the characters and lore as they were”.

Ewan McGregor and Amandla Steimberg didn’t actually get to see what critics of her character were saying about the story, or her performance that should be blamed on the director not helping her play her duel roles of Osha and Mae (let’s also shout out Leslie Headland naming her twin main characters after a facial cleanser brand name), or that making the Sith the “misunderstood victims” instead of the enemy while the so-called “lesbian space witches” (I can’t confirm the “lesbian” part but the Nightsisters these aren’t) did…this:

Those were the complaints. Nobody had any major issues with Stemberg until the “diss track”. MacGregor was considered a good young Obi-Wan until he spoke up against this. The problems with his Disney+ series was again down to the writing, the idea of Obi-Wan leaving his protection of Luke to track down Leia, a supposed scene where the set designers and prop department couldn’t come up with a believably unpassable fence, and a woman who decided her best way to get revenge on the Sith in general and Darth Vader specifically was to become one taking up too much screen time. In other words, all problems that had nothing to do with the actors, their race, who they slept with, or what they identified as. It was all about the writers, directors, casting department, and showrunners, sometimes even the producers. You can bet that’s not what they told the actors, some of whom admit that they’re “prepared” for “bigoted” backlash before the show or movie ever reaches a test screening. They’re protecting their own butts and in some cases their own agendas, and the actors are falling for it, leading to them taking some of the heat away from the critics and fanbases of the altered and ruined properties under the belief a false shaming will silence them and allow these “creatives” to remake pop culture icons in their image.

The other false voice, and one actors are starting to catch on to, are the current generation of “journalists”. Seeking controversy for clicks (and even “hate clicks” because it’s still cash revenue and eyes on them) or pushing an agenda of having every celebrity speak out to push the cause du jour, they specifically word questions in the hopes of getting the answers they want. They tricked Charlie Day into making a comment on Luigi Mangione, who murdered the UnitedHealthcare CEO and has become a folk hero of the radicals.

They’ll even re-contextualize comments to make it sound like it’s attacking those dirty fans who dare go after beloved directors and voice actors, especially when the culture war is involved. Just this week an old interview surfaced from The Independent with Halle Bailey about support she received for the live-action demake of The Little Mermaid, again because of choices by the casting director and writers to alter the story of Disney’s version of the mermaid, Ariel, as opposed to just redoing Hans Christian Anderson’s story again. Variety, wanting to simp for their Hollywood heroes, altered the context to be an attack on fans of the classic animated movie that didn’t even need a live-action remake, but got one because the Hollywood system hates cartoons and the increasingly former cartoon studio is run by people with a Hollywood mindset. Other shill sites like The Mary Sue will gladly push for The Cause (the source of “The Message”) and attack anyone who wants to see their favorite characters and lore done properly.

Variety, by the way, has a well-memed red carpet interviewer who seems to love getting things referred to as the “gayest” ever. Whether it’s because of his own queerness or just to get talked about–or both–is up to interpretation. You probably know the dude I’m referring to.

Getting some actors to discuss politics and…that one President everyone in Hollywood considers the anti-Christ for keeping them from having the first woman President (maybe if you ran a woman who wasn’t questionable for the job?) before the Republicans do, or loves to speak out on the cause du jour to get support from their peers is rather easy for the modern windbag. Yeah, I just got blunt for a moment. However, some actors see these loaded questions for what they are: controversy driven hate clicks that push the Agenda (to push The Message for The Cause) either because the reporter him/herself supports it or for eyes on their stuff and mentions on other platforms.

The actors who don’t hate the audience are starting to pull away from that. Neil Patrick Harris pushed back against a question during an interview that had nothing to do with the project he was promoting. Brie Larson, who used to love shooting her mouth off almost as much and Rachel Ziegler, pushed back against a reporter as a press junket who was more interested in getting a celeb to push his cause than promote the movie she and the rest of the panel were there to discuss. Sydney Sweeney fended off a reporter trying to get her to “repent” for the infamous jeans ad. Henry Cavill gained a lot of fan respect when he stood up for critics of Netflix’s The Witcher because they really loved the books and/or video game series, which Cavill himself is a fan of. That got him ran off the show by the showrunner but the fans of the source material stand by him.

And so the actors and especially actresses, not realizing the fans AREN’T against them but the writers, directors, and casters, are being used as pawns by people who want to alter the source material in tone or message for their own self-interests, while the press uses them as weapons against the people they don’t like and gain attention for questionable opinions disguised as facts. These performers don’t actually go to see what Nerdrotic or the Critical Drinker, or any other fan who isn’t going into some angry social media rant (and you folks are not helping educate the performers so kindly stop helping the Hollywood types twist them against fans) because they don’t have time. They’re busy acting or looking for the next role. If we could get past the Hollywood types and counteract what they’re being told, they would be less effective weapons because they’d be smart enough to know why the fans are mad, and it’s not at them until they’re used to attack fans of the source material. As long as they just see a new role instead of the reasons the source material was popular enough to be adapted anyway, they’ll continue to be suckers for the System. You’ll still have your Ruffolos and your Zieglers who just want to cause trouble and live in their own egos, but if Brie Larson can wise up as she appears to have, anything is possible. Again, don’t blame the actors, blame the people who made the thing, and convince the actors who we’re really upset with. That will help our cause more than it will their’s.