Daniella Pineda Backtracks On Her Derision Of 'Cowboy Bebop' Fans Three Years After Show's Release
Actress Daniella Pineda, who played Faye Valentine in Netflix’s panned live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop, backtracked on her previous comments where she derided fans of the original anime.
If you recall, back in August 2021 Pineda posted an update to her Instagram Story called “Fan Apology.” In the video, Pineda stated, “Hey guys, as you know our Cowboy Bebop first look dropped today which was so exciting. And I just wanted to address a couple of things that keep coming up in the comments amongst fans.”
She then proceeded to sarcastically deride critics of the first look saying, “First, I wanted to apologize to the fans that I did not anatomically match the Faye Valentine character. Six foot, double D sized breasts, two inch waist. You know they looked everywhere for that woman and they couldn’t find her. It was kind of weird. So they just went with my short a**, I know am I right?”
“There was talk about like can we put Daniella in a time machine, and maybe give her different parents so she has different genetic information to sort of make her look better. It proved to be too complicated,” Pineda added.
She then addressed criticism of her character’s outfit, “e other thing I wanted to bring up, was I wanted to apologize that the outfit I’m wearing is not exactly what she wears in the anime.’
She continued, “You know we tried, but doing stunts in tissue paper, things disappear, they rip, sometimes it just got lost…”
Next, she claimed, “Anyway, like I was saying that original costume, they made a couple of them, but like I said they sort of got slurped up in my various crevices never to be retrieved again so we really needed to build something that could withstand the test of time.”
The video then transitions into a Rick Roll with Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” playing over a comment Pineda made on The Hollywood Reporter’s Instagram that states, “Oh man THEY BETTER NOT RUIN THIS. I mean WHERE’S Ed?? They better not mess this up! Why isn’t Faye half naked???”
It also shows Pineda typing a new comment, “COWBOY BEBOP DROPS NOV. 19th ON NETFLIX!!!!!”
A few months after deriding fans of the anime, Pineda stood by her comments telling Deadline, “It was definitely my first interaction with very, very vocal trolls. Social media gives access to pretty much anyone who wants to say anything. Although I feel like some people would be disheartened, I found a way to clap back. with that video that I gave, which was very cheeky and silly.”
“Rather than stay quiet, which is usually what everybody wants you to do, I just felt so inclined to say something,” she continued. “I felt like that response was definitely in the spirit of Faye. Also I got Steve Blum’s blessing, the voice of Spike, who backed me up and I was like, ‘All right guys, I don’t care what you say, if that guy backs me up, no one can say anything.’”
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Now, while speaking with The Direct for her upcoming film The Accountant 2, Pineda has completely changed her story. She said, “I want to clarify something. So, years ago, when the franchise came out on Netflix - I was shooting a movie in Puerto Rico, and I was goofing off, and I made some — I'm not used to anyone watching my videos—And I made this, dumb video, kind of poking fun at myself, because I was getting all of these DM's from people saying, like, 'You're terrible and you're fat. Go away.' Just like, awful, awful messages.”
“So I just made this, like on-a-whim [Instagram] Story, just joking about the fact that, like, 'Sorry, guys, I'm sorry I was cast.' And I used the word 'fans' when I meant to say 'trolls,' and then it caught wind. And everybody was like, 'She's hating on the fans.' And I was like, 'This is getting lost in translation. I'm responding to trolls, not fans.' And it got really swept up anyway. I just had to put that out there,” she concluded.
Not only did she do a complete turn around about her comments deriding fans, but she also noted that studios need to do better when it comes to adaptations.
She said, “I feel like those animations, they mean so much to people, and they're so personal, and I think people really connect to when they watched it and the point of their lives. And so, I just feel like, and I'll say this, having been in one, I think that those studios, they need to do a better job at valuing that IP. It's really special. And people on 'Bebop,' they worked very, very hard, but it's just a special thing."
Pineda added, “And I understand why the fans felt the way that they did, but I also think that there's a lot of really cool, wonderful things that we did. And I also wish that we could have gotten the second season. You know, sometimes you just need one season to get things going, and then you prove yourself.”
What do you make of Pineda’s comments?
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She saw how Rachel Zegler imploded her career and realised that she's just as terrible, so some damage control was in order before her new movie comes out.
The woman could have cosplayed at conventions for years acting like Faye and made all the money. It might be hard to keep a Faye Valentine attitude up all day. Got to be better than pouring concrete.