Rosario Dawson Responds To Transphobic Accusations
Rosario Dawson has responded to claims of transphobia made by an old family friend.
This article is more than 2 years old
Rosario Dawson is finding herself at the center of lots of conversation after her well-received appearance as Ahsoka Tano on The Mandalorian. Unfortunately, it has also brought up some other elements of her past that she has had to acknowledge. One of the biggest of those is an ongoing legal battle between her family and and a friend that included accusations of transphobia from Dawson.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Rosario Dawson was asked about the lawsuit against her and her family from Dedrek Finley, a long-time family friend that lived rent-free with the Dawsons and also worked for them as a handyman. Finley made a number of claims including transphobic abuse and a physical attack that Finley claims the actress participated in.
“I would be [concerned] too if I heard some of those claims,” Rosario Dawson said in the interview. “But I mean, as we’re seeing right now in these past months, and just recently, actually, the truth is coming out. Every single claim of discrimination has been dismissed by the person who made them,” said Dawson. And she is correct. Of the twenty claims Dedrek Finley posited in his lawsuit, all but two have been dropped. The two remaining claims regard an alleged physical altercation between Finley and Dawson’s mother.
Rosario Dawson continued to defend herself in the Vanity Fair interview regarding the alleged transphobic comments that Dedrek Finlay claimed against her. “The reason that all of the discrimination claims were dropped is because they didn’t happen,” Dawson said. She goes on to reiterate that she was raised in a very inclusive mindset and that she has used her platform as an actress to highlight and fight for LGBTQ+ rights and issues. Considering that Finley’s lawyer quit the case, it definitely looks like Dawson is the one in the right here.
Was Dedrek Finley fabricating a lot of these claims in order to tarnish Rosario Dawson’s reputation and possibly hurt her chances at prominent roles? Unfortunately, we will never know exactly what transpired between the Dawson family and Dedrek Finley. Only those two parties will ever know exactly what went down between them. However, as far as the legal ramifications are concerned, it is definitely looking like Rosario Dawson will be in the clear when the dust finally settles.
Hopefully, this will keep the air clear for Rosario Dawson and her professional future. The overwhelmingly positive reception to her appearance as Ahsoka Tano on The Mandalorian looks to have paid off; a standalone Ahsoka Tano series is reported to be in the works with Dawson as the lead star. It is likely that Disney would not be putting their eggs in that basket if they weren’t confident that Dawson was innocent of the claims made against her. With the court case seeming to wind down due to so many of the charges being dropped, the optics are all in Dawson’s favor.
It sounds like these issues between Rosario Dawson, her family, and Dedrek Finley will be resolved relatively soon. Thankfully, it does not look like it will be affecting the actress and her immediate future. And from what we can tell, it looks like the claims about her being transphobic are completely unfounded. Let us hope we can put all of this awfulness behind us and just stay excited for what Rosario Dawson will bring to the Star Wars universe as Ahsoka Tano in future adventures.
