Imagine the heartache and soul-crushing shame of receiving a continuous influx of hateful messages simply because you secured a job. Picture opening your Instagram to hundreds of derogatory comments because you choose to pursue your passion. If you can fathom the pain of being bombarded with hate for simply being yourself, then you can begin to understand the experience of actress Francesca Amewudah-Rivers. When it was announced that she would play Juliet alongside Tom Holland in the Jamie Lloyd Company’s Romeo and Juliet in London’s West End, the internet was a battleground of both support and malicious hate.
The backlash was so intense that the Jamie Lloyd Company had to release statements publicly addressing it. Additionally, hundreds of actors signed an open letter of solidarity to show their support for Amewudah-Rivers. Even though it’s fantastic to see such support in the entertainment industry, which is known to be ruthless, these actions should never have needed to happen.
What is disheartening about the public’s response is that Amewudah-Rivers was criticized for her looks and for being a darker-skinned Black woman who doesn’t fit into Euro-centric beauty standards.
Let’s change the narrative a bit to combat so much hate on the internet surrounding the Black actor. Here’s more information on Amewudah-Rivers and a closer look at the misogyny fueling internet trolls.
Getting to Know the New Juliet
Amewudah-Rivers is a multi-talented Black woman. She is an actor, musician, and composer. In 2021, she was awarded the Evening Standard Future Theater Award for Audio Design.
The rising star has cultivated a dedicated career in the theater. She studied Music at Oxford University and trained with the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. Her resume further shows that she has worked with the National Theatre, the Roundhouse, Shakespeare’s Global, and the Actors Touring Company. She has also acted in the short films Minutes and Messenger and worked in the series Bad Education.
While there isn’t much about her personal life and interests online and her Instagram shows very few posts, you can tell that she is a woman who loves what she does. Through selective photos of her backstage encounters, you can see that she finds great joy in crafting and pursuing her art.
After knowing her credentials, one might question why she received so much hate for taking a role that, on paper, it seems she was qualified for. The answer is the hate wasn’t a criticism of her talent but opinions based on racism and misogynoir.
Let’s Address the Hate on the Internet
The recurring theme among the bigoted comments towards Amewudah-Rivers was about her looks and ethnicity. Many weakly argue that Rivers isn’t beautiful enough to play Juliet. Well, considering that in the original play, Juilet was played by a man dressed up as a woman, it’s weird that people are bringing up beauty standards.
Even though society has set egregious beauty standards, beauty is often irrelevant regarding talent and skill. But for many people on the internet, beauty seems to be the qualifier of respect and empathy. The internet has become a place where people overshare their opinions. Since there are no drastic consequences for calling someone ugly on the internet, people feel entitled to openly criticize maliciously. Perhaps people think that if they share enough hateful comments, the people in production will side with them and recast the play.
In the Black community, there is somewhat of a hyperfixation of beauty that is linked to colorism. This focus on appearance leads to the disregard and disrespect of certain Black women. But what if we didn’t focus on beauty and instead just concentrated on the quality of someone’s work? Theater isn’t about looks; it’s about conveying emotion, telling a story, and much more than a pretty face. After all, beauty is not a merit of talent or skill. Beauty is an opinion.
Many other comments said that a white actor should play Juliet because that’s how it was in Shakespeare’s original play. Apparently, many people forget that Romeo and Juliet isn’t a play based on any specific culture or ethnic reference. Set in unreal place about unreal people, anyone who recreates the film is free to bend and imagine the players in whatever form they desire.
All in all, many of these comments are rooted in misogynoir. Misogynoir is a term coined by Moya Bailey to describe the distrust, dislike, prejudice, and hatred of Black women. The word was created by combining “misogyny,” which is hatred and prejudice against women and girls, and the French word “noir,” which means black.
Labeling this type of hate for what it is can hopefully shed more light on the issue and support different institutions and places of work to adequately address this topic.
Despite all the hate, Amewudah-Rivers and the cast of Romeo and Juliet seem to be coming out on top.
In the End, Talent Will Prevail
Beyonce said it in “Formation:” “The best revenge is your paper.” Come to find out, the play is sold out. The events surrounding Rivers remind me of when a child throws a tantrum because they can’t find their favorite toy. The child discovers their missing toy was in front of them the whole time. People ran to the internet to “speak their mind,” and it seemed to have little to no effect on the outcome of the play.
The Guardian‘s review on Amewudah-Rivers’s performance is clear about why: “Francesca Amewudah-Rivers brings her spiky charisma as Juliet, all the more heroic given the backdrop of social media racial abuse she has received. Holland and Amewudah-Rivers are perfectly cast, wired with an awkwardly cool teen energy, she a mix of innocence and streetwise steel, he jittering with sweaty-palmed earnestness.”
While the trolls on the internet will continue to hide behind their screens and write hateful comments, I hope this article can shed some light on how commenting on someone’s experience or ethnicity is unnecessary. If you don’t want to see a movie or play for whatever reason, just don’t go to see it. Spreading vicious insults only creates a culture where people are valued only for their looks and not for their capabilities.
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