Gina Rodriguez took to social media Tuesday to publicly apologize for using the N-word while singing along to a Fugees song earlier this week.
The Jane the Virgin actress jumped into hot water on Tuesday when she shared a video on Instagram in which she was singing along to Lauryn Hill’s verse on The Fugees’ 1996 hit, “Ready or Not.”
“Voodoo/I can do what you do, easy,” Rodriguez recites in the video while getting her hair and makeup done. “Believe me/fronting n****s give me heebie-jeebies.”
Now she is saying that she is sorry. “Hey what’s up everybody, I just wanted to reach out and apologize. I’m sorry,” she said in a later video.
“I’m sorry if I offended anyone by singing along to The Fugees, to a song I love, that I grew up on. I love Lauryn Hill, and I’m really sorry if I offended you,” the actress continued.
Later in a photo on Instagam, Rodriguez issued another apology in written form.
“In song or in real life, the words that I spoke, should not have been spoken,” she began in the lengthy apology. “I thoughtlessly sand along to the lyrics of a favorite song, and even worse, I posted it. The word I sang, carried with it a legacy of hurt and pain that I cannot even imagine. Whatever consequences I face for my actions today, none will be more hurtful that the personal remorse I feel.”
Rodriguez also called the entire ordeal “humiliating” and a “public lesson,” adding that she’s let the “community of color” down.
“I have some serious learning and growing to do and I am so deeply sorry for the pain I have caused,” she concluded.
This isn’t the first time Rodriguez didn’t use common sense. She’s been caught in the middle of multiple questionable incidents in recent years; so much so many have called her out as being anti-Black.
In 2017, Rodriguez asked for a Latinx-centered superhero movie after Black Panther was first announced.
The following year, she was also accused of erasing Black women during an interview about her movie Small Foot. After Rodriguez’s co-star Yara Shahidi was called “goals for so many young, Black women” by a reporter, Rodriguez interrupted him to say “for so many women.”
Recently, Rodriguez also faced backlash for her comments about Latinas being paid less than Black actresses.
Perhaps she should say less.
