“iCarly” Fan Misogynoir is Part of a Larger Fandom Pattern

“Hi, I’m playing Harper on iCarly. I’m not replacing Sam,” actress Laci Mosley began in a now-expired IG story video in the middle of May. It was supposed to be a moment of celebration — the Paramount+ revival of iCarly had recently shared a photo of the new cast on set, which includes returning stars Miranda Cosgrove, Jerry Trainor, and Nathan Kress, as well as newcomers Mosley and Jaidyn Triplett. Instead, Mosley was having to fend off racist fans on social media, fans who wanted Jeannette McCurdy back in her role as Carly’s original best friend Sam. (McCurdy has retired from acting.) In her DMs and mentions on Instagram and Twitter, people called Mosley various slurs, including the n-word, and even made racist videos on TikTok, where her teenage sister saw them. These weren’t random trolls, but actual fans of the show on some level.

While Mosley was supported on Instagram by Cosgrove, Trainor, Paramount+, and the show account for iCarly, the biggest pushback against the racism done in the name of the original version of the show came from its writers room. iCarly writer Franchesca Ramsey — no stranger to harassment herself — posted a Twitter thread about the anti-Black abuse that Mosley receives and closed it with a unified response from the show’s writing staff. “We unequivocally denounce all racist attacks, anti-Black language and hate speech in the strongest possible terms,” the social media post read, in part.

It was some of the strongest condemnation of anti-Blackness that I have seen come from a production directed to its fanbase. Hopefully, it has a lasting impact — both on iCarly and on other shows whose toxic fans attack Black actors. Because this kind of racist fandom behavior isn’t anything new.

Mosley isn’t the first to be harassed because people in a given fandom assumed she was replacing a white actress (Javicia Leslie’s Ryan Wilder on Batwoman) or because she was playing a racebent version of a “historically white” character (Anna Diop’s Starfire on Titans). And she won’t be the last, because fandom is not a space that protects Black women from misogynoir. Misogynoir, a form of anti-Black misogyny present in the ways that Black women and femmes are rewritten and dehumanized in order to excuse the way we are treated (no matter how much power we have), is alive and well in fandom spaces across the internet.

In our first Fan Service column, we talked about the ways that escapism in fandom had its limits. Watching what Black female celebrities – and, to a lesser extent, their fans – deal with from fandom is a painful reminder that misogynoir doesn’t leave room for escapism. Not for Black women. Across a lifetime in fandom, it has become increasingly clear to me and many other Black women and femmes that these spaces are designed with hostility to us in mind. It begins with how Black female characters and the actresses that play them are subject to an unreasonably large level of hatred, especially when compared to their white coworkers.

In February 2014, actress Candice Patton was cast as the female lead, Iris West, in The Flash. From the moment the announcement came out, hundreds of comic-accuracy purists rose up to reject her casting. Before we even had a trailer with Candice in action or knew what her initial relationship with Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen would look like, people aimed their aggressive hatred at Candice. Seven years later, we’ve seen history repeat itself with other Black actresses following in her footsteps on the network, especially when shows with large, engaged fandoms are involved. During last summer’s Hollywood reckoning in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by police, The Flash social media account responded to fan accountability about the way the show had handled fan harassment. “We can do more. We will do more… we will not tolerate and will block racist or misogynistic comments,” the statement read. It was met with some amount of skepticism from fans who wondered why they were just now saying something, when an unending wave of misogynoir had been going on for years.

Azie Tesfai, who plays Kelly Olsen on Supergirl, tweeted in April, “It’s incredible how many can say it’s not racism or real to black actors that were just trying to do their jobs” in response to a thread that showed just some of the harassment she and other Black women received from CW superhero fandoms. She wrote that she has kept her own receipts of the misogynoir she’s dealt with since being elevated to a main character and Alex Danvers’ love interest, and… she shouldn’t have to. Black women don’t even have to be real to get hit with misogynoir — as seen in a viral meme that framed Invincible character Amber Bennett as the show’s “real” villain instead of the literally genocidal alien murder machine Omni-Man.

As the iCarly situation demonstrates, it’s not just The CW, and it’s not just superhero fandoms that treat Black people this way. Fandom isn’t all bad – of course not – but one of the glaring issues across multiple fandoms spanning decades is how misogynoir is accepted as par for the course. It isn’t enough that Black women characters are dismissed across the years with anti-Black misogyny (see “U-wh*re-a” from 2009 Star Trek fandom). These fandom spaces are often welcoming to the casual and long-term harassment of Black women performers and fans. Candice has been harassed for seven years and has spoken out about this treatment in interviews as recently as last year. Titans’ Anna Diop has been subject to rude comments from before the show aired in 2018. Almost a decade after the finale of BBC’s Merlin series, people still talk about Angel Coulby’s Gwen as if she was a threat or a menace.

Black women in fandom are harassed for years because people see them as “infringing” on these nerdy spaces – and it’s not just dudebros doing the harassment. For every comic bro mad that there’s supposedly a racebending trend wiping out redheads in comics, there’s a female shipper mad that she can’t picture herself in place of the Black woman now playing a character close to a hero she loves. (Many of the people who have been aggressive in attacking the women named in this article seem to be fueled by anger over their pairing of choice not looking the way they’d hoped.)

If you’re in a fandom and you see a trend of misogynoir against Black women – real or fictional – speak up and shut it down no matter who it’s coming from. Making fandom live up to the positive things we say about it can be hard, but it’s important that we don’t just stay silent as Black women are harassed and insulted simply because they’re not what a fandom wants for a given character.

Fandom should be a space where Black women – fans, actors, and characters – are respected and welcomed. It shouldn’t be a place where people feel empowered to harass Black women with slurs and threats or to spend years publicly hating on the characters they play.

In the end, Laci Mosley’s Harper isn’t replacing Sam Puckett on iCarly. She’s not even trying to. But even if she was, even if Mosley was actually playing a racebent version of that character, would that excuse the unending anti-Black harassment she’s received since getting the part? Would that excuse the slurs, the threats, or the violent hate done in the name of fandom and nostalgia? No. Not even a little bit.

Stitch will continue discussing the many layers of fandom in Fan Service, published every other week on Teen Vogue. You can follow their work on Stitch's Media Mix and on Twitter.

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