Whoppi Goldberg has zero time for racist comments directed towards the actors in the two new (and so far, very popular) fantasy TV shows House Of The Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. During the September 6 episode of The View, Goldberg and her co-hosts called out some of the awful commentary about Black actors being cast in the fantasy shows, both of which are HBO and Prime Video’s most successful series debuts ever.
As Goldberg rightly noted, the shows “don’t exist in the real world.” “You know that? There are no dragons. There are no hobbits. Are you telling me Black people can’t be fake people too? Is that what you’re telling me? I don’t know if there’s like a hobbit club, I don’t know if there are gonna be protests, but people! What is wrong with y’all?” she said.
“All of y’all who have problems because there are Black hobbits… Get a job! Get a job! Go find yourself, because you are focused on the wrong stuff,” Goldberg added.
CRITICS SLAM CASTING IN ‘LORD OF THE RINGS,’ ‘HOUSE OF THE DRAGON’: #TheView co-hosts react to criticism of the #TheRingsOfPower and #HouseoftheDragon series casting diverse characters. https://t.co/cVclFZQmjA pic.twitter.com/4XrGBJQspt
— The View (@TheView) September 6, 2022
The women of The View went on to discuss how Steve Toussaint, who plays Lord Corlys Velaryon in House Of The Dragon, received racist backlash when he was cast in the role.
“They are happy with a dragon flying, they’re happy with white hair and violet-colored eyes, but a rich Black guy? That’s beyond the pale,” they said.
Goldberg then noted that racist people are going to be very upset with the upcoming casting of the live action The Little Mermaid, because singer Halle Bailey, a Black woman, is taking on the lead role in the movie, which opens in May 2023.
This is an unfortunately consistent trend with fantasy/sci-fi fandoms. Obi-Wan Kenobi star Moses Ingram faced an influx of racist social media rhetoric when she starred in the Star Wars limited series, prompting her co-stars and Disney to come to her defense. The Last Jedi star Kelly Marie Tran faced similar vile treatment, but didn’t get the defense of Disney afterwards. Tran eventually quit social media because of the incessant comments.
Before The Rings of Power even premiered, there were countless acidic J.R.R. Tolkien fans saying the show was going to be horrible because it was trying to be “woke.” “Woke,” by their definition, means casting people of color.
They’re still so angered by the so-called “woke” casting, they seem to be review bombing the series on Rotten Tomatoes and Amazon. Review bombing is when people intentionally flood a show or movie’s reviews with negative reviews in order to tank its audience rating score, making it hard for the actual audience consensus to be reflected accurately. Amazon suspended the review feature on the show because of the apparent review bombing, per Forbes. The Rings of Power‘s Ismael Cruz Córdova, who plays the new elf Arondir, pushed back against to the unnecessary backlash by celebrating the representation.
“[I’m] looking for zero favors, but to live with the same chances to dream and thrive as anyone else,” he wrote in a powerful Twitter thread. “If you’ve ever felt discarded, marginalized [and] silenced — you are my people. And this moment is yours too!”
The View, Weekdays, 11/10c, ABC
