Perhaps a flash of insight would have helped.
As the female protagonist of the DC Universe series “The Flash,” Candice Patton was left to her own devices when she encountered a barrage of racially charged vitriol spewed at her by the comic book superhero’s fanbase after the show’s premiere. on the CW in 2014, and she discussed her experiences on the debut episode of “The Open Up Podcast.”
While mentioning that she took on the role of journalist turned superhero dispatcher Iris West in “The Flash” out of interest in the role and the need to “pay rent,” Patton, now 34, quickly learned how “all this stuff And you’re changing the way people look at the superhero genre and creating spaces for women of color who’ve never had that before. And it’s a lot of responsibility. It’s a lot of tension. It comes with a lot.
“And it’s also a very dangerous place to be if you’re one of the first and you get so many backlash from it. And there is no help,” she continued. “Now people understand it a little bit better. And they understand how fans can be racist, especially in the genre, misogynistic, all that.”
On the response from Warner Bros. and the CW “then,” she recalls, “it was kind of, ‘Yeah, so are fans, but whatever.'”
“There were no social media protocols to protect me. They just left all that stuff there,” she added, especially about online harassment.
“It’s just not enough to make me your lead actress and say, ‘Look at us, we’re so progressive, we tick the box’… It’s great, but it’s like taking me in the ocean alone near sharks,” she continued.
“It’s great to be in the ocean, but I could be eaten alive here,” she said. “Just because you put us in a fancy Hollywood TV or movie set with the hair and makeup and you assume we’re safe. We are not safe.”
Although the abuse had gotten so bad that she considered leaving the show by season 2, she eventually stayed and will begin filming season 9 of “The Flash” this summer.