Ryan Guzman is probably best known for playing Eddie Diaz on Fox’s incredibly popular 9-1-1. At least until this week. On Sunday he became famous for a completely different reason: he admitted on Instagram Live that he uses racial slurs with his friends.
“I have plenty of friends- black, white, asian, indian, whatever they are, korean- and we make fun of each other’s races all the time,” he said in the video. “We call each other slurs all the time.”
Ryan Guzman
Guzman was trying to defend his fiancee’s use of the N-word when she was younger, but there’s no defense, and he definitely made things worse. He should have apologized. His fiancee was wrong for using that word, and he’s absolutely wrong for using it with his friends.
As you can imagine, Guzman’s words upset some of his 9-1-1 co-stars. Oliver Stark, who plays Buck, has been very vocal about how he feels about the use of racial slurs…
Tweet… anyone else under any circumstances.
— Oliver Stark (@oliverstarkk) June 1, 2020
Aisha Hinds, 9-1-1‘s Hen, also sounded off about the situation.
TweetHow I FEEL daily is a perpetual state of GRIEF. There’s sadly no version of this indefensible discourse that doesn’t exacerbate that grief. There’s legions of learned behaviors that need to be named and neutured so we don’t continue to give life to them. May we know & DO BETTER. https://t.co/NmhIOVDWK4
— Aisha Hinds (@AishaHinds) June 1, 2020
Guzman did eventually apologize on Instagram. On Wednesday he posted this
I’m glad Guzman apologized. But he should know that it wasn’t okay to use racial slurs, let alone talk about it on social media! Will his co-stars want to keep working with him after this? I love Eddie Diaz, and his character is very popular but, will viewers still want Guzman to play Eddie?
I hope that he can learn from this. Everyone has said or done things they regret. However, it isn’t enough to just apologize. He must show that he knows what he did was wrong. He needs to listen and do better in the future.
I hope that maybe some good can come from Guzman’s words. Maybe we can all learn to listen and do better. Become better people.
What are your thoughts? Don’t hesitate to tell us in the comments below!
9-1-1 will return in midseason 2021.
