Hudson Thames, who voices Peter Parker in the animated Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man series, has addressed the backlash he received for comments he made during an interview around the time of the show's Disney+ premiere.
Here's what Thames said to Collider back in January when asked how he felt about the series introducing a Black take on Norman Osborn and spotlighting diverse characters such as Lonnie Lincoln, Nico Minoru, and Pearl Pangan.
"I thought it was awesome. I mean, my biggest fear was that it was gonna be annoying and woke, and it wasn't, and I was like, 'Yes, this is great, it's so well written,' like it feels real. I'm the oldest of five boys, so I feel like I kind of know what's happening in their lives and in high school, and it felt like it was doing that justice."
It's worth noting that Thames didn't actually call the show woke... he simply said he was glad it didn't come across as being woke (for many, the distinction didn't mean all that much).
As you might expect, this interview resulted in quite a bit of negative press for Thames, and the actor is now attempting to clarify his comments.
"So, obviously, something that I said was cherry-picked and used essentially with no context just to kind of stir up some drama," he tells Straw Hat Goofy. "We were talking about that little period of time before the show came out, and I was noticing a lot of comments online that I was getting, that was either people being nervous or expressing concern that the show was using topics of diversity and equality in an inauthentic or disingenuous way."
"It made me defensive, like I wanted to kind of defend our show a little bit," he went on. "It was such a poor choice of words. My point was that our show doesn’t have to do that, it doesn’t have to pull any tricks. Jeff [Trammell] did such a brilliant job, in my opinion, of writing what he knew. Equality and diversity was just already baked into the story he wrote, and nothing felt forced, I suppose, so I was really just trying to compliment the grace in which that all plays out in the show, and ironically, it’s what attracted me to the show so much in the first place."
However you may happen to feel about Thames' remarks, they didn't seem to have much impact on the show, which has been a big success for Disney+ and has already been renewed for at least another season.