Letitia Wright is apparently continuing to spread antivaxx sentiment on Black Panther 2 set
Hollywood continues to attempt to put together vaccine requirements that won't be torn down or ignored by the Letitia Wrights and Rob Schneiders of the world
The frustrating thing about making movies—at least, from the point of view of the people paying for them—is that you generally have to employ people to do so. People who are, among their other, probably very meritorious, traits, giant factories for both viruses and bad ideas.
Hence a recent report from THR, outlining the scream-inducingly “diverse” response that various (mostly unnamed) big name celebrities have had to polite requests that they get the damn COVID-19 vaccine if they want to continue working in a field where they often literally can’t wear masks to protect the people around them.
From a fandom point of view, the single most irritating note in the entire piece has got to be the paragraph centered on vocal vaccine critic Letitia Wright, who is now, of course, a key part of Disney’s Black Panther franchise. Wright previously came under heavy critique for the kind of “I, a person with no medical degree but a strong gut feeling, am just asking questions here!” rhetoric that has helped the delta variant remain a strong and vibrant part of the planetary population.
Said propagandizing doesn’t seem to have slowed down one whit on the Atlanta set of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, where she’s apparently been passing around anti-vaccination views from her position as one of the film’s chief stars. And while Disney is apparently planning on rolling out a “sticker system” that will mark vaccinated and unvaccinated workers on its sets, those new strictures—hammered out as part of ongoing negotiations between the studios and the Hollywood unions—won’t apply to Black Panther, since it’s already started filming. (Not that it’ll be difficult to identify at least one anti-vaxxer on the film’s staff; she’ll be the on in the costume who everyone’s calling “Shuri,” and, presumably, standing way too damn close to Lupita Nyong’o, who we must, as a species, preserve.)
The THR piece polls a wide variety of stars—reminding us, as usual, that you never want to come down on “The Rob Schneider side” of medical history. The Mandalorian’s Giancarlo Esposito probably sums up the opposite position best, though: “If you don’t want to vaccinate, go to a small island and sequester yourself. [Otherwise] you’re saying ‘Fuck you’ to all you other human beings. We all have to do it if we want to live.”
Seems pretty straightforward to us.