07/28/2026
You would think after all the casting BS surrounding The Odyssey, we’d give actors a little more grace and actually watch the movie before deciding they were miscast. But here we are again. Now it’s us doing the complaining over Children of Blood and Bone (and also Black Panther, but I digress).
I know this is gonna be an unpopular opinion, but Amandla Stenberg has publicly said she considers her skin tone when choosing roles and has even turned down opportunities when she felt she wasn’t the right fit. She’s also put her career on pause after receiving intense online backlash, making it understandable why she’d want to avoid going through that cycle again.
People are saying she’s doing blackface, but when I looked at the character posters, it seems like the marketing campaign cranked up the saturation and color grading. Amandla’s poster stands out on its own, but when you look at it alongside the others, the exaggerated lighting and contrast appear to be a stylistic choice applied across the board, not something unique to her. I don’t think the way her skin appears in the poster was her doing. If we’re gonna blame somebody, let’s put that blame on Hollywood and its long-standing obsession with colorism, not the actor.
And NGL, Tomi Adeyemi basically gave the movie, and Amandla, the middle finger. That didn’t help her case at all. It poured gasoline on an already raging fire before anyone had even seen the film.
And personally, I wasn’t a fan of the first trailer. It felt rushed and, love me some Beyoncé, but her song just didn’t fit the trailer. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe it was the music that was throwing the scenes off. It was a total mismatch. Where Ludwig at?
But that being said, I’m excited to see the film. Mystical Afro-fantasy goddess lore is my jam. So hear me out, maybe we should save the outrage until we’ve actually seen the movie. If it’s trash, I’ll come back and be the first one to admit it. But I’m hoping to be like, “Told ya so.”
And while I have y’all… I think David Jonsson is going to be incredible in Black Panther. Let’s give him a chance too.
