Daisy Ridley made her debut in the Star Wars saga with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, as she became the central figure of the sequel trilogy and explored her quest to become a Jedi. While most fans of the series appreciated a female character taking the series’ spotlight, other fans flooded social media with hateful remarks about the character. Ridley herself ultimately deactivated her social media accounts, yet she’s still fully aware of the toxicity that runs rampant on various services. The actress recently opened up about how disheartening it is to see the hard work of everyone involved with bringing the series to life getting completely trashed on social media.
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“It’s great that people are expressive of their views. But this is people’s jobs. People worked really, really hard on that thing,” Ridley admitted to Bustle. “I think there’s a way of having a discussion that isn’t so vicious.”
Ridley noted that social media has given users a false sense of importance, pointing out, “Because if you’ve got however many followers, and you write something that you think is, like, so deep, and a hundred people like it, it’s constant reinforcement.”
While deactivating her social media accounts might have cut down on the harassment she has to endure, she revealed a recent interaction in which someone was seemingly emboldened to voice their negative opinions directly to Ridley’s face.
“I was at my friend’s birthday,” the actress detailed. “And one of her friends, who I barely know, was like, ‘Hey, really liked the first Star Wars. Didn’t really like the second one,’ and I thought, ‘That’s rude, dude! That’s my job!’”
Ridley is understandably defensive of her Star Wars films, yet she doesn’t feel that the films should be immune to criticism. While she doesn’t think fans should be as vicious on social media, she understands that these attitudes are sparked by how passionate fans are of the series and that their objections are fair.
“I wasn’t surprised, no,” Ridley shared with USA Today when asked about the backlash to Star Wars: The Last Jedi. “It’s just a different thing. Everyone’s going to have an opinion now anyway on the internet, but I also think it’s fair. If people hold something incredibly dear and think they know how it should be and it’s not like that, it’s fair for people to think they were done wrong. It doesn’t mean they were – ultimately, [writer/director] Rian [Johnson]’s a filmmaker and one person can’t dictate how a film is supposed to be – but freedom of expression, sure.”
Fans can next see Ridley in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker on December 20th.
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