Social media can be a great tool when it comes to creating positive buzz for TV shows, but BBC actor Marc Anwar recently got himself into some very hot water due to some of his comments on Twitter. The Pakistan-born Coronation Street regular took to his Twitter page to post a flurry of comments that were racially offensive to the people of India. He furthermore called for Pakistani performers to cease their work in India. The controversial comments provoked outrage in many, and he has now officially been sacked from his job on Coronation Street.
Marc Anwar was evidently motivated to start firing off offensive Tweets when news broke of a gunfight between Indian and Pakistani forces in the region of Kashmir, which has been disputed between the two countries for decades. Anwar used asterisks for some of the words in his comments, but they didn't do much to soften the content. Here's just one example of the language he used in his Twitter outburst:
F*ing #indians killing our #Kashmir brothers and sisters, beygairth #NawazSharif still sucking #modi Lul!
In less than 140 characters, Marc Anwar managed to tweet something offensive about citizens of India, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi. The context also makes it clear that Anwar is suggesting that Sharif is no bueno. All in all, not the classiest Tweet ever to hit the Internet, and that's not even the worst thing he posted.
It's not too surprising in the wake of Marc Anwar's Tweet spree that the ITV network decided to sack him from Coronation Street. The episodes that have already been filmed with his character will still air as intended, but BBC reports that Anwar's presence on the show will be minimized until such a time as he can be written out of the plot. Anwar has come out and apologized for his comments, but the apology is too little and too late to save his job. In fact, he may have even greater trouble than just the loss of his job. The Twitter comments have evidently been reported to police as a hate crime, and Anwar is facing investigation from authorities in the near future.
There's no news just yet of how Coronation Street will go about writing Marc Anwar out of the show. He has played the character Sharif Nazir in 150 episodes of the series since 2014, and he's been instrumental to some of the most dramatic plots of the past couple of years. Given just how far Anwar went with his racially offensive tweets, fans may want to prepare themselves for a possible death for Sharif. It's difficult to imagine that ITV would want to bring Anwar back to the series after all the negative buzz, and killing Sharif off would be a definitive way to end his arc.
Only time will tell how Marc Anwar will make his departure from Coronation Street. We can only hope that he's done with racist tweets for the time being. Check out our fall TV premiere schedule to see what you can catch on the American side of the pond in the near future. American TV has seen its fair share of controversy lately with the firing of series lead Thomas Gibson from Criminal Minds, but hopefully that'll be it on the scandal front for a while.
