Last month, Idris Elba caused controversy after telling Esquire UK that he stopped calling himself a “Black actor” because of its limitations on his career. He told Esquire UK, “I stopped describing myself as a Black actor when I realized it put me in a box. “We’ve got to grow. We’ve got to. Our skin is no more than that: it’s just skin.” 

However, some on social media saw this as Elba renouncing his Blackness. Amid the Twitter discourse, “Star Wars” actor John Boyega came to Elba’s defense, saying Elba deciding not to call himself a Black actor speaks more about Hollywood than it does about him. Boyega wrote, “I think we should fixate on who is typecasting and putting actors in boxes because of this, not on making weird adjustments for them. We continuously focus on what we have to do so they don’t do this or that. Very worrying. We BLACK, and that’s that.”

Elba later shared in an interview with The Guardian that the controversy surrounding his statement is a prime example of how social media misconstrues certain opinions and statements to create conflict. 

After the Esquire interview, Elba shot back at his denouncers on Twitter:

There isn't a soul on this earth that can question whether I consider myself a BLACK MAN or not. Being an 'actor' is a profession, like being an 'architect' ,they are not defined by race. However, If YOU define your work by your race, that is your Perogative. Ah lie?

— Idris Elba (@idriselba) February 11, 2023

Despite all this, Idris Elba’s new movie “Luther: The Fallen Sun” hits Netflix on March 10.