Alexandra Shipp stopped by theGrio right before the premiere of “Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B” on Lifetime to talk about her portrayal and her critics.
Many of those critics have been coming for Shipp’s casting on social media ever since she took the part after Zendaya dropped out of the project.
The insults Shipp received on Twitter alone caused her so much anxiety that she decided to stop using the service.
“I’ve pretty much stopped 100% of my tweeting right now. I’ve just kind of taken a back seat and allowed my team to take over, for the sole reason that I am human and will look at it,” she said.
She added, “I’ve been bullied almost my entire life, so I understand how hard it is… I just try to steer clear.”
At first, she was deleting and blocking her haters, but it just became too much for her to handle. She’s no longer using that method on Twitter.
“In the beginning I was just like ‘delete and block, delete and block,’ but you can’t delete and block everything. We are gluttons for punishment, especially women,” Shipp said.
She added, “you want to know what people are thinking about you. So I’ve just kind of taken a back seat and will allow all of the press and stuff to die down. Once the movie is out in the world and the dust has settled, I’ll be able to do my own funny tweets again.”
The Aaliyah biopic, which Wendy Williams produced, premiered on Saturday, Nov. 15, 2015, and received an alarming amount of criticism from news sites and social media users.
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(Photo Source: Lifetime’s Twitter)
