LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MAY 23: Leslye Headland attends the launch event for Lucasfilm’s new Star Wars series The Acolyte at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on May 23, 2024. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)

Star Wars: The Acolyte showrunner and the former assistant to convicted felon Harvey Weinstein Leslye Headland has declared that people who oppose wokeness in Star Wars are not fans of the franchise.

Mae (Amandla Stenberg) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

Headland’s comments came in an interview with The New York Times’ Brooks Barnes, who maligns Star Wars fans as misogynists for criticizing the woke DEI casting of the show.

His example? A single YouTube comment that questions, “Why are there so many women, girls and minority characters increasingly dominating the ranks of Jedi?” Ironically, George Lucas made similar comments when asked if he was going to bring more women into the future of Star Wars in an interview with Starlog in February 1988.

Lucas was asked, “Are you going to bring more women in for future Star Wars films?” He responded, “Well, what of Princess Leia? When you’re making a war film, how are you going to put women in it? Think of other war films, think of The Longest Day, those films. Well, it’s your galaxy; I have to go with the rest of the world. And still make it believable. I’m not how many women will be in the rest of the films; that the kind of thing that plots dictate. What would Star Wars have been like if Han Solo had been a woman?

George Lucas responds to Starlog question about bringing more women into Star Wars

READ: The Acolyte Passes Half-a-Million Dislikes on YouTube: Displeased Star Wars Fans Ratio Lucasfilm

Nevertheless, Brooks uses this single question to declare this is “a version of the same misogyny and racism that greeted Rey, the female Jedi (played by Daisy Ridley) who made her debut in The Force Awakens in 2015, and that drove Kelly Marie Tran off social media when she appeared in The Last Jedi (2017).”

Kelly Marie Tran explained why she left social media in an op-ed for The New York Times. The op-ed makes absolutely no mention that her decision had anything to do with Star Wars fans. In fact, the only mention of Star Wars is at the end of the op-ed where she declares, “I am the first woman of color to have a leading role in a Star Wars movie.”

Daisy Ridley as Rey in The Force Awakens (2015), Lucasfilm

Daisy Ridley has also rejected the narrative posited by Barnes. In January of this year during an appearance on the Today show, Ridley was asked by one of the show’s hosts, “I just have to ask because there are some of the, I’d say extreme Star Wars fans who have made this a conversation on the internet about how they don’t want a female director, which seems bizarre because episodes of The Mandalorian were directed by females, Kathleen Kennedy has been overseeing all of this. So what is your take?”

She responded, ““I think my take is things get blown out of proportion and the interactions I’ve ever had with people have been nothing but wonderful and supportive. And honestly the day we announced I was coming back at celebration last year, you cannot imagine the joy and good will in that room.”

She added, “So I’ve only ever been embraced. And I think we’re going to make a great film and people will love it.”

Daisy Ridley speaks on TODAY about being a part of the upcoming Star Wars film “Star Wars: New Jedi Order” and reacts to conversations online about the film having a woman director. pic.twitter.com/Ju17myPDkm

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) January 25, 2024

READ: IGN Writer Isaiah D. Colbert Claims Star Wars Fans “Hate Black People” After ‘The Acolyte’ Trailer Receives Massive Dislikes

After clearly trying to gaslight his readers regarding Star Wars fans with Kelly Marie Tran and Daisy Ridley, Barnes then brings up South Park lampooning Kathleen Kennedy’s handling of Star Wars and Lucasfilm.

He writes, “Kathleen Kennedy, who runs Lucasfilm, has also experienced it, with “South Park” harshly attacking her in an episode last year. The cartoon depicted Kennedy giving the same feedback to Star Wars creators over and over: ‘Put a chick in it! Make her lame and gay!’”

Interestingly, Barnes makes no mention that Bob Iger, a male, was also lampooned in the same episode alongside Kennedy. But it’s totally misogyny, and has nothing to do with what Kennedy and Iger have done to Star Wars since they purchased it, which includes putting a chick in it and making it lame and gay.

LONDON, ENGLAND – APRIL 07: (L-R) Daisy Ridley, Kathleen Kennedy and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy attend the studio panel at Star Wars Celebration 2023 attends the studio panel at Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London at ExCel on April 07, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Disney)

As for Headland, she informed Barnes, “As a fan myself, I know how frustrating some ‘Star Wars’ storytelling in the past has been. I’ve felt it myself.”

In a follow-up text message she then declared that Star Wars fans who oppose wokeness are not actually Star Wars fans. She said, “I stand by my empathy for ‘Star Wars’ fans. But I want to be clear. Anyone who engages in bigotry, racism or hate speech … I don’t consider a fan.”

However, as anyone who has been on the internet knows, if you are a faithful Christian, zealots of LGBTQ+ ideology accuse you of being a bigot. On top of this, Lucasfilm employs numerous people who are outright racist against white people. The most infamous is Krystina Arielle.

In a post to X back in March 2020, she declared all white people racists. She wrote, “White people: f***ing stop it. Your racism won’t save you. Your ignorance is not an excuse.”

Krystina Arielle on X

In June 2020, she also wrote, “Just a reminder that White Women are just as complicit in the upholding and enforcing White Supremacy.”

Krystina Arielle on X

In fact, Lucasfilm backed Krystina Arielle and her racism against white people. The company posted to X in reaction to this author’s coverage of her posts in 2021 at Bounding Into Comics, “Our Star Wars community is one of hope and inclusivity. We do not stand for bullying and racism. We support Krystina Arielle.”

Even more interesting is that Leslye Headland herself has been accused of taking part in hateful actions against Gina Carano. In Gina Carano’s lawsuit against The Walt Disney Company and Lucasfilm, it details that Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy wanted Carano to join a struggle session on ZOOM with her and 45 other employees “who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community.”

The purpose of this struggle session, according to the lawsuit, “was a ‘litmus test’” to determine if she had the “willingness to endure such harassment and humiliation.”

The group was described by her publicist as “a friendly group that WANT Gina to succeed.” However, multiple employees that were to take part in the struggle session had contributed to the GoFundMe campaign including Leslye Headland. According to the lawsuit, the GoFundMe campaign defamed Carano “by accusing her of being a ‘bigoted’ actress.”

The lawsuit states, “several had contributed to the anti-Carano GoFundMe account, including filmmaker Leslye Headland, who was scheduled to produce a Star Wars production.”

Gina Carano is Cara Dune in THE MANDALORIAN, season two, exclusively on Disney+.

So, it’s abundantly clear that Headland like The New York Times’ Brooks Barnes is clearly targeting people who are opposed to woke ideology because surely she could not be referring to herself and Lucasfilm employees that the company defends.

She’s just using the tired, lame, and boring tactic of accusing people of beings -ists and -phobes all because they are uninterested in her new Star Wars series that has clearly embraced woke ideology.

(L-R): Amandla Stenberg, Lee Jung-jae and Director Leslye Headland on the set of Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, exclusively on Disney+. ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

And the show indeed has. Headland herself described the series as being a lesbian fan fiction with a Star Wars veneer. During an interview at Star Wars Celebration last year she said, “When I saw Frozen as a grown a** woman, I cried through the entire movie. There was just something about the relationship between the sisters, the like devillainization of the classic kind of fairy tale ‘bad guy,’ you know, the concept of true love being between two sisters and not a heterosexual relationship. It just destroyed me, completely.”

She continued, “And I thought, ‘Gosh, I would love to make something like this, for lack of a better term, Disney.’ Meaning something that like my parents would have allowed me to see when I was younger as a queer person, but I would have been able to understand as a queer person. And I think I would have had a completely different life. And so I really was inspired by it and was like, ‘God, I would love to make a story like this.’”

LGBTQ+ activist Leslye Headland is a new director in the Star Wars franchise:

Her goal for the films? To make it LGBTQ-inclusive and similar to Disney fairy tales. pic.twitter.com/Anfkn9RciK

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 19, 2024

Headland then shared she took this idea and pitched it as The Acolyte, “And so when I was developing this original idea to pitch to [Lucasfilm President] Kathleen [Kennedy], I thought well, ‘You know, it can’t just be that.’ When you’re pitching Star Wars you have to pull from what George [Lucas] was also interested in.”

“It can’t just be like well I’m referencing- especially if you’re gonna set something during the High Republic, end of High Republic into prequels. You don’t have the Skywalker Saga. You can’t reference a character that was created by George and/or Filoni. You have to create your own new characters,” she added.

LONDON, ENGLAND – APRIL 07: Leslye Headland onstage during the Acolyte studio panel at the Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London at ExCel on April 07, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Kate Green/Getty Images for Disney)

Actress Jodie Turner-Smith also informed Entertainment Weekly the series is “part of a wave of more inclusive and beautifully represented Star Wars shows. So that felt really cool. And I felt the importance of that, especially in some of the stuff that I got to where everyone really was excited about what they were seeing and what that would maybe mean for different fans — fans that don’t necessarily look like what you normally think the traditional Star Wars fan looks like. Because if there’s anything that I learned from this show, it’s that the Star Wars fan is varied.”

Turner-Smith was not the only one to use identity politics to promote the series. Charlie Barnett also detailed to Entertainment Weekly, “I don’t think I could have ever imagined myself as a Jedi. Yes, one, because I was not reflected for so many times throughout these films in the past. But it was also something that didn’t equate in my mind. I don’t know about you guys as well.”

He added, “So to see such a diverse group played out now, I know that it’s going be a healthy reflection on so many other young people and old people. No ageism allowed in this. It’s Star Wars we can all fit. I think it’s going to be a really impactful. It’s gonna be a cool moment for me for sure, I can tell you that.”

(Center, L-R): Yord Fandar (Charlie Barnett) and Jedi Padawan Jecki Lon (Dafne Keen) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

What do you make of Headland declaring Star Wars fans who are opposed to woke ideology are not fans?