Sex Education's Ncuti Gatwa calls out fan wearing blackface to dress as Eric

22 October 2019, 15:26

By Jazmin Duribe

"Blackface is never cool. NEVER COOL."

With Halloween just around the corner, it's that time when people love to dress up as their favourite TV characters. Sadly, some still don't understand that dressing up as someone doesn't mean donning offensive blackface. Unfortunately, Ncuti Gatwa was forced to call out a girl for wearing blackface to dress up as his Sex Education character Eric Effiong.

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The offensive photo, which has since been deleted, was uploaded on Instagram. The person was standing next to another woman who had dressed as Maeve Wiley (Emma Mackey), Eric's friend on the show.

The woman donned a brightly-coloured outfit just like Eric would wear and she had visibly darkened her skin. She also posted the scene from the show she was copying alongside her photo.

The image was captioned: "Attempt of Eric and Maeve," in Spanish, and Sex Education's official Instagram account was tagged. Ncuti and Emma were also tagged in the post.

The Rwandan-Scottish actor called out the "insensitive" post on Twitter, he tweeted: "Blackface is never cool. NEVER COOL. It perplexes me that people don’t realise how offensive, insensitive and stupid it is. And the cheek of this girl to tag me in the picture as if I would be happy. What an idiot."

READ MORE: This is why blackface for Halloween is racist
Understandably, the image received a lot of backlash and apparently before the photo was deleted, there will people calling her "racist" in the comment section on Instagram. The reaction wasn't any tamer on Twitter either, with many baffled how blackface is still a thing in 2019.

Ncuti hasn't spoken any further on the incident but he has deleted his tweet calling the girl out.

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