The Someone Great actress Gina Rodriguez issued a public apology on Tuesday, October 15, after facing immense backlash for singing along to the racial slurs of a song in a now-deleted Instagram story video.
"I just wanted to reach out and apologize. I am sorry. I am sorry if I offended anyone by singing along to the Fugees — to a song I love, that I grew up on," the 35-year-old actress said in her apology video that she put up on her Instagram stories. "I love Lauryn Hill and I really am sorry if I offended you."
In the video which the actress posted earlier on Tuesday, she could be seen singing along to the Fugees song 'Ready or Not', while getting her hair and makeup done. During her singing video, the actress rapped along to the verse: 'Voodoo; I can do what you do, easy / Believe me ... n–gas give me heebie-jeebies.'
On uttering the racial slur, Rodriguez simply smiled and laughed. The controversial video and the actress' subsequent apology sparked a huge discussion on micro-blogging website Twitter, with a lot of users complaining that Rodriguez's apology failed to make a mark.
One user commented that she "wins the award for the most half-assed apology" while a second user sarcastically mentioned that they "love to end Latinx heritage month with Gina Rodriguez saying the n-word."
Another user noted that the actress used the N-word as if she were "a child flipping someone off from a bus for the first time, all feeble-like and with the nervous energy of doing something you know damn well you're not supposed to be doing."
This is not the first time that the Jane The Virgin actress has come under fire for making anti-black comments. In 2017, Rodriguez wrote many tweets about the inclusion of Latinx actors in Marvel and DC Comics movies, when Black Panther was announced.
However, she failed to notice that Tessa Thompson and Zoe Saldana were both Afro-Latina stars who were, at the time, a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Earlier this year, the actress further broke down at an interview while apologizing for the controversial comments she had made previously. "The black community was the only community I looked to growing up. We didn't have that many Latino shows, so the black community made me feel like I was seen," she said. "So to get anti-black is saying that I'm anti-family."
