Actresses Kristen Bell and Jenny Slate separately announced on Wednesday that they would no longer be voicing biracial cartoon characters, acknowledging that white privilege had allowed them to take on such roles.
Slate, who voices Missy on Netflix’s “Big Mouth,” released a statement on Instagram early Wednesday that she would leave the role to make room for a black actress who can better portray the character. The actress said she originally justified her decision to play Missy because the character’s mother is white and Jewish like her.
“But ‘Missy’ is also black, and black characters in an animated show should be played by black people,” Slate said. “I acknowledge that my original reasoning is flawed, that it existed as an example of white privilege and unfair rights made within a system of social white supremacy, and that when I played ‘Missy’, I was participating in an act of erasing Black people.”