Halle Berry is good at a lot of things: she’s still acting in major movies including the most recent John Wick, she hosts a minishow with a pal, she spends a lot of time online looking fashionable, etc. She’s also great at creating viral moments and can resonate with her fans on a lot of different topics, from her Oscars hair moment to pantsless posts, romantic declarations and more. She often goes viral for workout posts, too. Yet, as much as she likes to have a moment online, she recently got candid about wanting to ‘slap’ online trolls.
Despite the love and the body positivity comments often sent Halle Berry’s way, the Moonfall actress recently opened up about her usage of social media. While she mostly thinks platforms like Instagram are “fun,” she told Essence she really can’t handle the negative personalities that manifest on the interwebs, noting,
The thing I hate, and this will never stop, I know because it’s the nature of the world, but I really hate the negativity that gets on there. I just really want to like, slap these trolls because it really is damaging to people. It’s damaging to young people and I really wish that if you really didn’t have something [nice] to say, don’t say it. If you’ve got something so negative to say about somebody, why are you on their page? You’re obviously into them or you wouldn’t be there. So it’s kind of annoying and I worry for the younger people who really don’t understand that these are just hating trolls that have no life and they take it so to heart. It can be really, really damaging, and I see that with my daughter and it infuriates me.
Still, despite not getting the negative ways people who follow her Instagram page sometimes behave, and despite seriously disliking the way the internet can impact her daughter, Halle Berry remains highly active online. From workout posts to living her best pants-free life, she’s often highly relatable and when she’s not she’s usually aspirational.
She actually also explained why she is so active online despite sometimes having to deal with negativity, noting that social media is a way for her to control her own narrative. If she sticks with the internet and makes her own choices, she feels she has her "own voice."
But as an actor and public figure, I think it’s really important to have my own voice. I can say what I want to say about what I want to talk about. It can be in my voice and my words. For a long time I felt that the story that was perpetuated about me just wasn’t true but it was editorialized by people and it was out of my control. Now I get to control and show different sides of myself. I really love that.
I find that really interesting. Sometimes celebrities end up leaving the internet altogether after dealing with haters online. Halle Berry has what almost seems to be the opposite perspective. I don’t think there’s any right or wrong way to run your career -- OK, I mean at least when it comes to having or not having social media. At the end of the day, Halle Berry has the right to let us into her life however she chooses. If you are someone who hates it, the easier path is to just choose not to follow her than to bring all this negativity into the world.
