The actor Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, who received a barrage of online racial abuse after being cast in a production of Romeo & Juliet this year, has called for industry-wide action to protect black and brown actors.
The abuse aimed at Amewudah-Rivers beganafter the Jamie Lloyd Company theatre group announced the cast of its production in April, with Amewudah-Rivers to play Juliet and the Spider-Man star Tom Holland playing Romeo.
Amewudah-Rivers has revealed she also received hate mail, and that she did not feel safe while working on the play, her West End stage debut, at the Duke of York’s theatre.
“There were many days where I didn’t know how I was going to get through it,” she told the Stage. “The flurry of abuse was sustained throughout the whole job. I received death threats, hate mail sent to the theatre. I didn’t feel safe at work.”
People getting pissed about black actors starring in Shakespeare plays is the dumbest shit I’ve seen all week. The people who whine about this likely are barely familiar with the works of Shakespeare and complained when they were forced to read it in high school. As a side note, the best portrayal of Macbeth that I’ve seen was that of Denzel Washington.
I once saw a conservative dipshit I knew in HS get mad at a black man playing the lead in Othello at a local playhouse, posted it to FB ranting like an idiot
He proudly didn’t read it in English class, clearly
Juliet should be played by an English man, just like Shakespeare intended.
