Marissa Bode has slammed the “aggressive comments” and “jokes” made about her ‘Wicked’ character’s disability.
Marissa Bode is calling out the vile comments about her ‘Wicked’ character’s disability
The 24-year-old actress is a wheelchair user in real life just like her character, Nessarose Thropp, in the two-part movie adaptation of Broadway classic ‘Wicked’ and has been left appalled by the “deeply uncomfortable” remarks about Elphaba’s (Cynthia Erivo) sister’s disability.
In a TikTok, she began: “It is absolutely OK to not like a fictional character. I am going to be admitting my bias in the way that I have a lot of different feelings on Nessa than a lot of you do.
“That’s totally fine; I think Nessa is complex but that’s the beauty of art and Wicked and these characters and the movies wouldn’t be what it was if there weren’t different opinions on the characters and who’s truly wicked or not.”
Marissa – who made her feature-length debut in the John M. Chu blockbuster – insists she doesn’t take issue with the jokes made about her character’s “silly, goofy” personality – but she cannot fathom why people think it’s acceptable to pick apart Nessa’s impairment when it’s not a “fictional” part of the story and real people live with disabilities.
Marissa continued: “Not liking Nessa herself is OK because she is fictional, that’s totally fine.
“I am a deeply unserious person [and] I love a little jokey joke. … Jokes about Nessa’s personality are silly, goofy because she herself is fictional.
“That being said … aggressive comments and ‘jokes’ about Nessa’s disability itself is deeply uncomfortable because disability is not fictional. At the end of the day, me Marissa, is the person that is still disabled and in a wheelchair. It is simply a low-hanging fruit that too many of you are comfortable taking.”
Marissa was “scared” to address the “gross” comments on social media and admits they would have affected her much worse if she was younger.
She went on: “The most frustrating part of all of this is how scared I am to even post [or] talk about this.
“This goes so far beyond me Marissa just needing to ignore comments on the internet. These comments do not exist in a vacuum. Aggressive comments of wanting to cause harm and ‘push Nessa out of her wheelchair’ or that she deserves her disability are two very gross and harmful comments that real disabled people, including myself, have heard.”
She advised the ignorant trolls: “Listen to the people or to the person that [the comment] is affecting and how it makes them feel.
“Thankfully, I am at a place in my life today where I can recognise these jokes about disability are made out of ignorance. I couldn’t say the same about Marissa 10 years ago.”