Ready to meet Karen? The trailer for the BET Original Movie went viral over the weekend and caused a social media frenzy about its plot, which appears to be, uh, loosely borrowed from 2017’s Get Out.
In the trailer, a successful black couple move into an upscale suburban neighborhood, only to find their next door neighbor is a racist woman titled, um, Karen, who enjoys talking to the manager, installing security cameras. and threaten the blacks around her that they must “conform”.
Of course, the racial tension only increases over the course of the TV movie, eventually reaching a boiling point that involves Karen creeping around a house brandishing a gun.
But who plays the film’s titular white supremacist? It’s Taryn Manning, and her cast has fans asking a lot of questions. While the actress first rose to fame on Crossroads in 2002 alongside Britney Spears, she is best known for playing Orange, New Black resident white supremacist Tiffany “Pennsatucky” Doggett.
Manning’s personal beliefs are also called into question by viewers, who pointed to his bizarre Instagram post in defense of Donald Trump holding an upside-down Bible during the Black Lives Matter protests last year.
“Am I the only one who remembers how Taryn Manning (Karen in this case) made a weird q an * n esque rant at the BLM protests last year?” a Twitter user wrote alongside a number of the screenshots.
And although her Instagram account is private, the star – who has over a million followers – recently shared a post of herself as a child posing with two black friends, captioned “Far From” be racist ”.
Others on social media were more concerned with the quality of the film, joking, “It looks terrible by the way. Hollywood is doomed,” while another called it a “sick parody.”
Check out the Karen trailer and see some of the best reactions to the teaser below.
