Candice Patton says the CW didn’t protect her from racist fans of The Flash
Early backlash to the Black Iris West was treated as just "how fans are," Patton recalls
Aux News Candice Patton
Yet another Black actor is detailing the failures of their employers to protect them from bigoted backlash. Candice Patton has been vocal about her experience with racist fans of The Flash, and she is one of many CW actresses who banded together to speak on their experiences back in 2020.
Two years later, in a new interview on The Open Up Podcast, she reflected on the lack of support she felt after her groundbreaking casting as the Arrowverse’s Iris West. “It’s a dangerous place to be in when you’re one of the first, and you’re facing backlash for it and there’s no help. Now, people understand a little better and they understand how fans can be racist, especially in genre, and misogynistic. But at the time it was kind of like: ‘Yeah that’s how fans are, but whatever,’” Patton said.
She continued, “Even with the companies I was working with, The CW and WB, that was their way of handling it. We know better now. It’s not okay to treat your talent that way, to let them go through abuse and harassment. But for me in 2014, there were no support systems. No one was looking out for that. It was free range to get abused every single day. There were no social media protocols in place to protect me, so they just let all that stuff sit there.”
The actor admitted to being “severely unhappy” and even wanting “to leave the show as early as season two.” She felt she was “treated differently than other people,” and saw things “happening for my white counterpart that’s not happening to me.”
“[There] has to be people in positions of power who understand my experience and understand the Black experience and the Black female experience who can say, ‘Okay, she needs protection,’” she said. “Any time you hire a minority of any kind you have to be prepared to protect them. In the real world, we are not protected. So just because you put us on a fancy Hollywood set, with the hair and makeup and you assume we’re safe, we are not safe.”
“If I get pulled over at 2 a.m. in Jackson, Mississippi, by a white cop, do you think he gives a shit that I’m Candice Patton from The Flash? It doesn’t matter,” Patton went on. “We still need protection because the world sees us in a certain way. When I step on a set and everyone working around me is white, I’m not protected and I will never be protected. And that’s not to say everyone has bad intentions, but they have blind spots. That can contribute to my harm. It’s been a learning experience for companies and productions.”
“It’s just not enough to make me your lead female and say, ‘Look at us, we’re so progressive, we checked the box,’” she said. “It’s great, but you’ve put me in the ocean alone around sharks. It’s great to be in the ocean, but I can get eaten alive out here.”
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I was always more disturbed by Barry and Iris being step-siblings on the show.
They’re not step-siblings, more like foster siblings. But yes, that was unnecessary and squicky, especially with Joe West outwardly ‘shipping them together.
I think it was probably a bit tricky because the plot around Thawne framing Henry and Joe raising Barry was a good one and Iris is Barry’s comic-book girlfriend / wife as well. So either you drop or change the Thawne plot (which was great), the relationship between Joe and Barry (the heart of the early, and best, seasons), or the comic-book relationship between Barry and Iris (which would annoy the comic-book fans who were the show’s primary draw early on).
You could just make Iris Joe’s favorite niece. That way Barry and Iris could still have known each other–and been friends–as kids without also being foster siblings.
Guess it wasn’t so tricky after all.
It’s hot :/
I feel like this is not the best reaction to someone talking about dealing with years of racism.
Yawn.
The part about if she gets pulled over in Jackson, Mississippi is obviously true, but a weird thing to bring up in relation to the show that she works on that shoots in Toronto, Canada.
Yeah, I wish this piece gave any indication of what kind of “protection” Patton wanted. Did she want a therapist, possibly on-set, as part of her compensation package? Did she want anti-racist PSAs, or in-universe content to that effect? Or is this all about social media, and the CW being too cheap to hire some minimum wage underling to delete all the offensive comments they could (which, being limited to official postings, wouldn’t be all that much)?
I got the feeling she wasn’t calling out her specific employer for not doing anything so much as saying that people in general just weren’t ready for it, didn’t take it seriously enough, and didn’t know how to handle it in 2014 and she suffered for that lack of institutional knowledge.
But she is quoted as calling out her specific employer:
“The CW and WB, that was their way of handling it. We know better now.
It’s not okay to treat your talent that way, to let them go through
abuse and harassment. But for me in 2014, there were no support systems.”So, what exactly did she want her specific employer to do? Maybe she goes into detail in the podcast, but it’s not at all clear in this piece.
Who was she specifically calling out with regards to “protection”, then?FFS, common sense is free.
This is what she wants obviously. Bullet Proof windows.
um, not toronto, but vancouver.
Just correct the person without that irritating ‘um’
um, blow me
It’s JD Harmeyer!
They have hate crimes in Canada. There are anti-Black racists in Canada. They even have Nazis in Canada.
Yes, but they don’t have Jackson, Mississippi in Canada. She could’ve just said if she gets pulled over at 2am. Didn’t have to link it a specific place that has nothing to do with the show and makes it sound like she maybe wants a 24/7 traveling security detail provided to her.
So, death threats are cool and good and should be ignored as part of the process.Canada has a different flavor of racism but somewhat fewer racial attacks and murders by police than the arbitrary example she used.
So, it’s cool. Shit, I was looking at it wrong, like death threats and racial harassment being terrifying and a black woman being in only slightly less potential danger in CA than in the US.
Sick that’s a load off. Glad this conversation’s over, tho.
I am talking very specifically about only one part of what she said that was weird. Get the hell out of here with all that other bullshit you’re trying to put in my mouth.
Lol
Yeah,you don’t believe there is racism in Patton’s BIRTHPLACE in fucking MISSISSIPPI. But you’re not racist, right?
So, death threats are cool and good and should be ignored as part of the process.Right, because that’s what he said. Dipshit.
So only people in Vancouver can pull her over and be racist? The Flash airs in the USA, you absolute fucking moron. And OH YEAH she is FROM Jackson Mississippi, you stupid fucking shitbird.If you’re not going to use your fucking BRAIN, then shut the fuck up. God, you’re a fucking ass.
Please no! I need to still believe in Canada
The Kids In The Hall are still really fucking good, so there’s that.
Are you the Canadian Tourism Board?
NO, but I grew up in Detroit, I’ve eaten at Tim Horton’s after a night of drinking in Ontario, and I’ve been to Eastside Mario’s…while also drinking. I smoked Players while I did it, so I’m effectively a Canadian.
Can confirm, am Canadian. We got a lot of racists up here, we just hide it better than the US (at least until recently). I’m mixed race but passing white and some of the shit I hear when people think they’re in safe company…
“white counterpart”, so you’re talking about Grant, right? Well, he is the star and titular character. Generally that’s what happens to the lead. That being said, I never was crazy about her character, Iris & Barry have zero chemistry in my opinion.
I remember people expressing their displeasure at both her acting and her scripts, but I don’t remember a race thing.
I don’t doubt it has happened but I always thought Emily Bett Rickards took the worst of the online abuse of the Arrowverse stars. So many dumb people out there who don’t understand that actors aren’t responsible for plot decisions or dialogue.
A black actress portraying a 70 year classic DC comics character that’s basically the Flash’s white, red-headed Lois Lane?
Clearly, we all know that comic book and pop culture fans on the internet are famously known to approach things like that with calm, mature reactions and with absolutely zero racism on social media.
well, if you don’t remember it, then it couldn’t have happened. I’m sure Patton is just making it all up. Case settled.
People getting mad at her acting / scripts is just racists trying to hide behind a tree.
Remember all the complaints about Moses Ingrams acting on Kenobi. It’s just people not liking Black people. They’re just afraid to say that.
Not as afraid as they used to be, unfort
So no criticism of a Black woman is allowed? Because either a critic is an open racist, or a racist is hiding their racism behind the critique? You’re saying racists are afraid to express their racism?
By finding some other subjective reason not to like them.
Iris was written as a bit of a pill in those early seasons.
The writing for Iris was… not good. But she did the best she could with some bad material given to her.
I 100% believe all of that happened to Ms. Patton, and it sucks. Genuinely curious what ‘protection’ looks like, though?
Should have thought about that eight weeks ago. We need to talk.
I think it can look like a lot of different things, but one step that a franchise can take is being very outwardly vocal in their support of queer or BIPOC cast before the media even drops. Put their support behind their cast without ever pretending the fans have any point. Star Wars has been slowly moving toward this (although they’re still lagging a bit), just look at the difference between how the cast and crew got behind Moses Ingram quickly versus the way Kelly Marie Tran and John Boyega were left to hang out to dry. Going a step further, Tawny Newsome has stated that Star Trek doesn’t use a contract to hold their stars back from being as vocal as they need to be to tell racist fans to fuck off as needed. I think a lot of these family franchises will hold back cast members with contracts so as not to allow them to be uncouth or alienating when speaking about their worlds, so it was nice to hear that Trek places no value on racist fans whatsoever (also, what kind of fucking idiot racist thinks that Trek is the media for them? Trek isn’t exactly subtle with it’s pro-equality message, and it never has been!).
by “protect me” she means “plant viral stories about me ‘clapping back’ against racists on websites like avclub” and hey, she’s right!
I wonder if the racist trolling by fans would have been worse or not if she wasn’t possibly the most beautiful woman on earth
Sadly not surprising. How did the “Geek” community ever get the rep for being inclusive and made up of misfits and outcasts, etc.? Socially awkward does not automatically constitute being a good person. So many of these “geeks” has long enabled rampant sexism through their fandoms and the predominance of White Male characters, first and foremost. None of this is shocking. The comic guys can be creeps. I was outside of New York Comic Con in 2009 listening to two guys make anti-semitic comments while sitting there in t-shirts with the Captain America shield and the Fantastic Four logo and I thought about the irony, considering the Jewish creators that came up with both of those properties. Indeed, the entire comic industry was created by largely Jewish and Lithuanian guys who were the children of immigrants. The rampant racism in all of these escapist communities is beyond sad.
““It’s a dangerous place to be in when you’re one of the first…””
You can recognize a pioneer by the arrows in his back. — Beverly Rubik
If roses were constantly laid at her feet, she’d bitch about the thorns.