Will Poulter, the Bafta-winning actor and star of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, has decided to “step back” from Twitter for the sake of his mental health, in the light of “recent experiences”.
Poulter, who plays hotshot video game designer Colin Ritman in Charlie Brooker’s interactive episode that launched on Netflix on 28 December 2018, released a statement on Twitter, saying “I accept all criticisms” but that he felt it best for him to avoid the “inevitable negatives” that come from social media engagements.
The actor was subjected to offensive comments about his appearance on social media in the week since the episode appeared.
Poulter said: “I’d like to say a heartfelt thank you to everybody who has watched Bandersnatch and for their responses (whatever they may be) to the material we created. I accept all criticisms and it’s been a delight to learn that so many of you enjoyed what many people worked very hard to produce!
He continued: “As we all know, there is a balance to be struck in our engagements with social media. There are positives to enjoy and inevitable negatives that are best avoided. It’s a balance that I have struggled with for a while now and in the interest of my mental health I feel the time has come to change my relationship with social media.”
With love... pic.twitter.com/JSm7oNLTsV
— Will Poulter (@PoulterWill) January 2, 2019
Poulter confirmed that he would continue to be an advocate for organisations such as the Anti Bullying Programme.
Bandersnatch has been met with mixed responses from TV, film and gaming fans and critics. The Guardian’s TV critic, Lucy Mangan, hailed it the birth of a new genre, though one which “rarely deviated from the expected deviance, rarely landed in an unexpected place or – and this was where it most resembled its videogaming ancestry – had energy to spare to make the characters much more than ciphers.”
Poulter chose to close his Twitter statement by riffing on the show’s new style of storytelling: “This is not the end. Consider it an alternative path.”
