Actress Gina Rodriguez has apologized for using the N-word while singing along to “Ready or Not,” a song by The Fugees, in a now-deleted video on Instagram Tuesday.
“I am sorry if I offended anyone by singing The Fugees, to a song that I love, that I grew up on,” Rodriguez said in a subsequent video on her Instagram stories. “I love Lauryn Hill. I really am sorry if I offended anyone.”
A flood of Twitter criticism followed Rodriguez’s initial video and apology.
“Love to end latinx heritage month with gina rodriguez saying the n-word,” the poet Melissa Lozada-Oliva wrote on Twitter.
“Gina Rodriguez is an example of the bold anti-blackness of non-black people of colour. Black people keep telling ya'll not to use our reclaimed slurs, & here you go on your IG story mouthing along to a song saying ‘n----,’ playing all in our faces,” tweeted writer Kinsey Clarke. “Ugly, racist, & disrespectful.”
“Somebody please get gina rodriguez a hobby, literally any hobby i am begging,” wrote Hannah Giorgis, a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Rodriguez, who is Puerto Rican, has touted her efforts to expand opportunities for people of color. In 2017, she created her own production company, "I Can and I Will" to promote underrepresented communities off and on-camera.
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But the actress has been at the center of criticism over previous comments that have been pointed out as anti-black or insensitive to the black community.