Riverdale star Lili Reinhart has issued an apology after tweeting what she later called a “racially insensitive” photo to her 900,000 plus followers.
Reinhart, 21, posted a photo of a girl who appeared to be dressed as a demon and was covered in black paint on Sunday, October 22. She captioned the photo: “Found my Halloween costume!! Inspired by the color of my soul.”
The image sparked immediate backlash from some fans, including one who tweeted, “the act of painting yourself black connotes blackface, regardless of intent or context. can be read as [people of color] = witch/demon.” But some fans also took to Twitter saying they didn’t see anything wrong with the actresses post. “I don’t understand why people were coming for Lili Reinhart for that Halloween costume. That was NOT blackface,” one follower wrote.
Lili tweeted this out but she never intended any harm, as you can see. pic.twitter.com/332i8XnvHR
— satan (@nicky_vidaca) October 22, 2017
The CW star quickly deleted the photo and apologized.
“I did not mean for my tweet to come off that way. I can see how it was interpreted as being insensitive, completely. I saw the pic on a Halloween Instagram and didn’t think it would be interpreted as being racially insensitive,” she wrote on Sunday, October 22.
This is not the first time that a celebrity has been accused of doing blackface for Halloween. Julianne Hough was criticized after photos of her in dark makeup portraying Uzo Aduba’s Orange Is the New Black character, Crazy Eyes, at a Halloween party in 2013 surfaced. She later responded with an apology: “It certainly was never my intention to be disrespectful or demeaning to anyone in any way, I realize my costume hurt and offended people and I truly apologize.”
Heidi Klum, Colton Haynes and Hilary Duff are some of the others who have come under fire for wearing racially insensitive costumes.
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