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HomeDisabilityWicked’s Marissa Bode Calls Out Internet Trolls Using Disability as a Punchline

Wicked’s Marissa Bode Calls Out Internet Trolls Using Disability as a Punchline


Marissa Bode poses in front of a poster for Wicked.  She is using a manual wheelchair and wearing a white gown.
Photo courtesy Universal Pictures

Wicked is one of the biggest Hollywood hits of the year, setting box office records and dominating cultural conversation since its Nov. 22 premiere. Marissa Bode, the first wheelchair user to play the character Nessarose, has been enjoying the whirlwind that comes with such a blockbuster release, attending red-carpet events and having important conversations in the press about inclusion. She’s also facing Internet trolls who use her disability as a punchline when joking about her character. 

So Bode is using her platform to call out the ableism behind the jokes. She posted a TikTok video on Nov. 29, just a week after Wicked premiered, revealing that she’s been actively deleting comments from people joking about pushing Nessa out of her wheelchair and saying that the character “deserves” her disability.  

Bode, 24, began her statement by saying that she understands why some people don’t like Nessa and clarifying that jokes about Nessarose’s personality and her fate are funny because they are based on fiction. However, Bode draws the line at jokes about her character’s disability and she’s not keeping quiet about it.  

@marissa_edob Representation is important but that’s not the only thing that will save the disabled community. I need a lot of y’all (non-disabled people) to do the work. To dissect and unlearn your own ableism. Listen to disabled people. Follow other disabled people outside of just me. Read up on the disability rights movement/watch the documentary Crip Camp! I understand no one likes feeling like they’re being scolded. But true progress never comes with comfort. And that’s ok. #wicked #nessa ♬ original sound – Marissa

The fact that harmful rhetoric like this exists online isn’t news to the disability community. But Bode confessed she was shaking while recording the video because she was afraid of the potential backlash from calling it out publicly.  

Bode said she hoped that talking about it would prevent other wheelchair users from internalizing false, ableist comments based on ignorance.   

“This goes so far beyond me … just needing to ignore comments on the internet. These comments do not exist in a vacuum,” she said, explaining that similar comments force disabled creators offline. “Rather than dismissing one another and claiming an experience can’t be true because you personally don’t feel that way about a joke that wouldn’t have affected your demographic [anyway], listen to the people or the person that it is affecting and how it makes them feel. 

“I’m worried that a younger version of myself is somewhere on the internet and is harmed by these comments,” she said. 

She ended her message by asking many of her followers to take a lesson from Wicked and try to listen to and understand other people’s differences more before making hurtful comments on the internet.  

female wheelchair user and a nondisabled man dance together wearing colorful costumes.
Marissa Bode appearing as Nessarose in Wicked. Photo courtesy Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures.

Bode captioned the video with a call to action for nondisabled people: 

“I need a lot of y’all (nondisabled people) to do the work. To dissect and unlearn your own ableism,” she wrote. “Listen to disabled people. Follow other disabled people outside of just me. Read up on the disability rights movement/watch the documentary [Crip Camp]! I understand no one likes feeling like they’re being scolded. But true progress never comes with comfort. And that’s OK.”  

Bode is one of the first wheelchair users to use her public platform to expose ableism so publicly, so New Mobility reached out to Jenna Bainbridge, another actor who uses a wheelchair, for her reaction to Bode’s message.  

“My initial thought is that I am incredibly proud of Marissa for addressing this directly and so eloquently,” Bainbridge says in a statement to New Mobility. The actor, who is the first wheelchair user to originate a role on Broadway, says that her father showed her the video and asked her if she’d ever experienced similar harassment online. She had to to tell him that unfortunately the comments were nothing new to her or other disabled performers.

“It is such a wonderful gift to the entire disabled community that she is in such a public spotlight and shining so bright, and it breaks my heart that because of that spotlight she is receiving hateful and ableist backlash,” she says. “I hope she knows that we are all behind her and sending her love and are so incredibly proud of how she is handling herself in these previously uncharted waters.”  


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