Taryn Manning Says She Was ‘Attacked’ By White Women Over Her 'Karen' Role

The 42-year-old actress spoke about the backlash she received over the film, in which she plays a racist, entitled white woman, aptly named Karen.

September 3, 2021

Taryn Manning says her role in the new movie Karen didn’t sit too well with—you guessed it—Karens.

The 42-year-old actress touched on the backlash in a recent interview with Mr. Warburton magazine. Manning told the outlet she anticipated to be criticized over the film, in which she plays Karen White: a racist, entitled white woman who terrorizes her new Black neighbors.

“I was, kind of, taking it on head first and, like, responding to people, you know, ‘I’m so sorry you feel that way,’” she said in a clip obtained by Page Six. “I was attacked a lot by white women who felt that I had betrayed my own race.”

But despite all the controversy, Manning said she felt it was important to do the film, as it addresses issues and topics that have been ignored for so long.

“I know when a subject is so active, it’s like an active nerve right now, a lot of people aren’t taking it well,” she added. “But the point was to illuminate something that needs to be brought to the forefront so we can start to change humanity … Some people are hard-wired, maybe they grew up in a household where they never even really had a chance to think for themselves. It’s just this repetitive generational cycle that they’re in — there’s that. There’s maybe an experience with someone like that, that scarred their frontal lobes, or it’s just a bad day.”

Immediately after the Karen trailer was released, social media users slammed the film for its similarities to Jordan Peele’s Get Out. Karen director/writer Coke Daniels dismissed the criticism, insisting there were major differences between his project and the Oscar-winning horror flick.

“I don’t agree with the narrative that we ripped anything from ‘Get Out,’ they’re two totally different films,” Daniels told TMZ. “Ours is about an entitled racist neighbor who tries to run the Black family out [of] the neighborhood [and] is about a mixed-race couple that goes to visit and meet the family.”

Karen premiered in U.S. theaters this weekend.