Who Plays Karen in the Upcoming Horror Movie ‘Karen’? Plus, Watch the Hilariously Questionable Viral Trailer
Ready to meet Karen?
The trailer for the BET Original Movie went viral over the weekend and sent social media into a frenzy over its atmosphere, which appears to be, uh, very loosely borrowed from 2017's Get Out.
In the trailer, a successful Black couple move into a posh suburban neighborhood, only to discover their next door neighbor is an entitled, racist woman — named, ahem, Karen — who loves speaking to the manager, installing security cameras and threatening the Black people around her by telling them they need to "comply."
Of course, the racial tension only heightens over the course of the trailer, eventually reaching a boiling point that involves Karen creeping around a house brandishing a gun.
But who plays the film's titular Karen? That's Taryn Manning, and boy does her casting have fans asking a lot of questions.
While the actress first rose to fame, more or less, in 2002's Crossroads opposite Britney Spears, she's most known from playing Orange is the New Black's resident white supremacist, Tiffany "Pennsatucky" Doggett.
Since the release of the trailer, Manning's personal political and social beliefs have been called into question by social media users, many of which who pointed out the actress's alleged former, bizarre Instagram post in defense of Donald Trump holding up an upside-down Bible during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
"Am i the only one who remembers how Taryn Manning (Karen in this) went on a weird q an*n esque rant during the BLM protests last year?" one Twitter user wrote alongside a number of screenshots.
And while her Instagram account is now private, the star — who has more than a million followers — recently shared a post of herself as a child posing with two Black friends, captioning it, "Far from racist."
However, others on social media were more concerned about the quality of the movie, joking, "This looks terrible btw. Hollywood is doomed," while another labeled it a "sick parody."
Watch the trailer for Karen, and check out some reactions to the teaser, below.