Earlier this week, we reported that Evan Peters, best known as Quicksilver in the X-Men movies, is rumored to be playing Mephisto in the MCU. It appeared that he was getting into that evil role very quickly, too, as fans were astonished to see him retweet a video celebrating cops chasing down a man and tackling him to the ground.
The video was captioned with the following:
“I can watch these piece of shit looters get tackled all day!!”
There’s no confirmation that the person being chased is a looter or if they’re simply a protestor, but regardless of whether they were or not, retweeting a video of white cops pursuing someone and cracking their head against the front of a parked car is not a good look right now. And that’s putting it very mildly.
Peters’ fans were shocked and dismayed, particularly as afterwards he posted a black image indicating that he supported Black Lives Matters. Replies accused him of “showing his true colors,” saying “how dare you post this,” and telling him to “READ THE ROOM.” He then quickly went on to trend on Twitter in the celebrities section, with 13.7k tweets mentioning him.
Now, it’s time for damage control, as Peters quickly posted an apology stating that:
“I don’t condone the guy watching the news at all in the video which I have deleted. I unknowingly retweeted it. I’m deeply upset it got on my newsfeed. I sincerely apologize if anyone was offended. I support black lives matter wholeheartedly.”
Let’s leave how you “unknowingly retweet” something aside for one minute and this apology seems to have damped the fire without extinguishing it completely. Many fans are now urging Peters to put his money where his mouth is and make a substantial donation to bail funds for arrested protestors. Whether he does this or not, he should probably keep a low profile for a while.
Beyond that, celebrities should have a long, hard think before they tweet anything, as it feels like everyone with a blue checkmark is obligated to post dumb takes right now.