Vanessa Morgan Gets Apology From ‘Riverdale’ Creator After She Slammed Depictions Of Black Characters On TV
Riverdale actress Vanessa Morgan received an apology from the show’s creator, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, on Friday, after she criticized the depiction of African-American characters on TV.
“We hear Vanessa. We love Vanessa. She’s right,” Aguirre-Sacasa wrote in a lengthy Instagram post. “We will do better to honor her and the character she plays. As well as all of our actors and characters of color.”
As The Inquisitr reported, Vanessa took to Twitter three days ago to express that she was “tired” of black characters being pigeonholed as dangerous thugs and “non dimensional” sidekicks written to support the white leads. While her tweet did not mention Riverdale by name, many Twitter users assumed that she was talking about the series. Vanessa subsequently tweeted that she is also the show’s lowest-paid regular castmember.
Her tweet about black characters on TV currently has over 19,000 likes, over 3,000 retweets, and close to 400 comments.
Near the end of Aguirre-Sacasa’s post, he explained that the series’ writing team had made a donation to Black Lives Matter’s Los Angeles chapter and declared that Riverdale will be “part of the movement, and not outside of it.”
In the caption, Aguirre-Sacasa included three hashtags” “#hearvanessamorgan,” “#blmla,” and “#riverdale.”
The post has been liked more than 60,000 times, and over 1,200 Instagram users have commented on it. In the comments section, some fans praised Aguirre-Sacasa’s statement.
“I’m proud of you Roberto and the other people that make this show possible. And I’m really happy that she spoke up,” one fan wrote.
“AS YOU SHOULD!!!” another Instagram user commented before adding a clapping emoji. “Thank you for listening to her.”
But others seemed to doubt the sincerity of the apology.
“We’ll believe it when we see it,” a third follower wrote.
A fourth person felt that Riverdale‘s writers should have addressed the lack of development of their black characters since Season 1
“Good job for the change but this should have been the writers’ intentions since the start,” they pointed out.
A social media user also requested that the writing team give Vanessa’s character a backstory.
I’m not being Quite anymore. ?? #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/JXgJic4mrR
— Vanessa Morgan (@VanessaMorgan) May 31, 2020
A commenter also claimed that they had seen screenshots on Twitter that indicated Aguirre-Sacasa and other members of the Riverdale writing team had previously unfollowed Vanessa on Instagram. Although he currently follows the actress, the commenter expressed suspicion that he may have unfollowed and refollowed her after she expressed her frustration with the depiction of black characters on television.
