Ada Wong
RE4
Another day, another toxic example of fandom directing hate somewhere they shouldn’t. Shockingly, it’s at a women, chasing her off the internet entirely, it seems.
This time, it’s Resident Evil 4 Remake actress Lily Gao, who played Ada Wong in the new, highly rated remake. While her performance was criticized by some, that devolved into people heading to her Instagram to personally harass her, and as such, she deleted/hid all of her posts on the platform except for one talking about the role of privilege in society, which had been posted back in 2020.
There is of course a reasonable way to criticize one particular performance in any form of media (and many liked Gao as Wong!), but of course there are lines that the internet crosses quickly and easily, and even a vocal minority of fans in a series as big as Resident Evil is more than enough to constitute a deluge of hate toward a person.
Now, in the wake of the harassment and Gao’s retreat, we’re seeing the other side of things as people try to rally to her side and support her, letting her know they think she did a good job.
They’re also surfacing things like older interviews showing just how excited she was to play Ada Wong in the game.
Gao also played Ada Wong in the 2021 Welcome to Raccoon City Resident Evil movie in live action. Wong was also teased for future seasons of Netflix’s Resident Evil series, but it was canceled before that had a chance to come to fruition. It appears Capcom liked her so much in the movie they had her do the voicework/performance for the game as well.
This is, of course, extremely sad. No one deserves to be personally harassed like this, and we find ourselves in this situation far too often with particular games and particular fandoms. This is definitely not even the first time something like this has happened with Resident Evil in particular. I hope Gao is able to return and continue acting and doing voicework and this hasn’t soured her to the whole prospect. But given recent events, it would make total sense if she needed some time away from the internet. The people harassing her most certainly do.
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