Amanda Abbington has responded to controversy over her Strictly Come Dancing casting after viewers vowed to ‘boycott’ the programme this year due to earlier comments she made.
The actress, 49, was unveiled as the first participant for this year’s lavish BBC dance programme.
She’ll compete alongside Layton Williams and the oldest-ever participant Angela Rippon when the popular series returns, with the lineup still being finalised.
However, Amanda quickly found herself in serious water after Strictly fans uncovered social media postings she posted about drag queens.
Amanda provoked outrage earlier this year when she responded to footage from a Caba Baba Rave, a baby sensory and cabaret event for parents and their babies aged 0-2 years old.
Following a video of the rave showing a person dancing in boots and a bondage harness, Amanda tweeted that the show was ‘not for babies’ and said that ‘if you think it is, there is something fundamentally wrong with you’.
In a follow-up tweet, she penned: ‘I lost quite a few followers for saying that a semi-naked man in thigh-high boots dancing in a highly sexualised way shouldn’t be performing in front of babies and it tells me everything I need to know about where society is heading. How do you not agree with me on this?’
After being accused of transphobia, she added: ‘I never mentioned the trans community! How on earth is my post transphobic.’
‘I’m saying you do not perform that kind of act in front of BABIES. It’s abhorrent’, she blasted.
Amanda has now entirely abandoned Twitter, and her account has been deactivated three times.
In a long video posted to Instagram over the weekend, the Sherlock actor said she is ‘not transphobic’ and addressed those who are refusing to watch Strictly 2023 because of her.
‘I just wanted to quickly come on because apparently, I’m trending on Twitter, but I’m not on Twitter anymore, I left voluntarily because I don’t like it over there anymore.
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‘But apparently, I’m trending because people are gonna boycott Strictly. I think it’s because of tweets I made back in March regarding a drag show,’ she said.
Explaining her tweet, she said: ‘Now, I need to make this clear – I love drag. I think it’s an amazing form of entertainment and I f***ing love drag queens, I think they’re hilarious and brilliant and it’s an art form. And I think there’s absolutely a place for it in the entertainment industry.
‘My son played Jamie in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie and he was a wonderful drag queen. He was wonderful in it.
‘But, my tweet back in March was regarding a 12-year-old who was doing it in front of adults and it just upset me because I saw a kid, a little kid, a 12-year-old, doing something very over-sexualised and I didn’t think it was right.
‘Personally speaking, I don’t think 12-year-olds should be performing in drag shows in overtly sexual ways because they’re 12 and they need a childhood, it’s nice for kids to have a childhood and grow up and find that out when they’re old enough to really understand it.’
‘And that was my tweet. I didn’t associate it with the trans community, nor would I associate that with the trans community, because I think they’re two separate things,’ she said.
‘I’m not transphobic, I’m not a transphobic person. I’m a firm supporter of the legitimate trans community, I always have been.’
Amanda went on to say she thinks the transgender community has been ‘infiltrated by some people who want to cause damage and want to cause trouble, and pit people against each other’.
However, she is adamant that she ‘would support any trans person who is feeling persecuted or not listened to or not seen’.
‘I’m not a nasty person,’ she vowed. ‘Anyone who knows me knows that I would give you my last tenner if you needed it.’
The actress – who is in a relationship with Britain’s Got Talent stuntman Jonathan Goodwin – declared: ‘I support the trans community and I also support women’s rights and the importance of women in society, and I think those two are being really pitted against each other.’
‘What we need to do, more so now than ever, is just make sure that everybody is looking after each other because it’s f***ing toxic out there. It’s a horrible place if you let it be,’ she said.
‘I don’t want everyone to be at each other’s throats, I never wanted that.’
She then addressed statements she made some years ago, claiming she was “ill-informed.”
‘It was a stupid thing to write and I instantly regretted it and I apologise. I did my research and I’m much more informed now.’
Referencing the Strictly boycott, she concluded: ‘I’m sorry if you feel like you need to boycott Strictly for a tweet I made about a drag show, but I don’t think 12-year-olds should be doing overly-sexual drag acts, that’s my personal opinion and I’m not pushing it on anyone else, I’m just saying that’s how I feel.’
As for her Twitter suspension, she ended by clarifying that the reason she was banned from the platform three times was that she ‘went after trophy hunters and called them all sorts of names’, which she doesn’t regret.
Strictly Come Dancing returns to BBC One and iPlayer later this year.
Source My Celebrity Life.
