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Actress Laci Mosley has a word for racist viewers of iCarly reboot. The A Black Lady Sketch Show actress was offered a role on the iCarly revival now airing on Paramount+. She was excited to discover that her role would be a fully developed character with her own dreams and aspirations. Mosley’s initial excitement soon grew into pain when she became the target of racist comments after her involvement was announced this spring.

The revival is based upon the Nickelodeon original series in which Miranda Cosgrove portrayed a web talk show host Carly Shay. In the reboot version, which premiered last month, features Mosley as Carly’s best friend Harper. The racist messages that quickly flooded social media, included several racial slurs from angry viewers who caviled that Mosley’s character was a “Black replacement” for Carly’s best friend in the original series, Sam Puckett, who was played by Jennette McCurdy who has since stopped acting.

“She’s not a replacement of Sam,” Mosley tells LA Times. “She’s not a substitution. She’s a completely different person. She’s queer, she’s Black — and not in a stereotypical way. We don’t even address her queerness as something odd. Harper never has a coming out. She’s just queer. It’s normal. No one cares, you know, and I love that about the role. But also, she’s really fun. She pushes Carly into doing crazy things all the time.”

One of the writers from the new series added her two cents on Twitter rebutting the idea that Mosley’s character Harper being Sam’s replacement.

Many of the offensive content has been removed, but Mosley still suffers from the after affects of such emotional cyberbullying and verbal abuse.

Mosley wrote a heartfelt message on her personal Instagram account in May in response to the backlash, “I felt silly being so upset because I’ve been in this little brown body my entire life and racism isn’t new but it still hurts… Black is beautiful and no amount of slurs or vitriol you dump online will change that.”

This response prompted a new wave of attacks, and she quickly grew defensive. Mosley responded to a TMZ post that captures her cursing at iCarly trolls. She quoted the tweet, “I shouldn’t have been cursing in this response but I was really caught off guard by the onslaught of racist trolls. I deleted a lot of comments but they keep coming on every platform. Being a Black woman is exhausting. We all deserve better.”

Though many of the comments toward Laci’s new role are hateful, there are a few fans who noticed the policing of Mosley’s response to these racist attacks is a form of misogynoir. Misogynoir is a term used to define the way Black women are particularly discriminated against based upon their race, sex and other factors, including their vocal tones or word choice.

In Mosley’s interview with the LA Times, she shares how Black women deserve adequate protection in Hollywood.

“Black women deserve protection. We deserve care. We deserve to not be the mules for every single cause — and then when we need help and support, that’s nowhere to be found,” Mosley said. “We’ve seen so many times Black women’s work is monetized, stolen from us, you know, and we’re abused. … It’s time for Black women to get their share because Black women have been out here from day one fighting for everybody.”

Despite the negative commentary and backlash to Mosley’s role and her natural frustration, she is still receiving an outpour of love on social media from her fans.

Be sure to support actress and comedian Laci Mosley in the new iCarly series on Paramount+ out now and A Black Lady Sketch Show on HBO.

 

Actress Laci Mosley Has A Message For Racist ‘iCarly’ Reboot Viewers  was originally published on globalgrind.com