What’s it like to be the main character of an online scandal?<\/p>\n
That’s one of the questions raised in a new documentary about Lisa Manobal \u2013 one quarter of K-pop phenomenon Blackpink and a breakout star of TV show The White Lotus.<\/p>\n
The film captures an unfolding controversy, as leaked videos show Blackpink using racial slurs when they were teenage trainees in the K-pop system.<\/p>\n
The clips, which emerged last year, showed the band covering US rap songs during rehearsals. Explicit language, including the n-word, was left uncensored. <\/p>\n
The scandal blew up while Lisa was rehearsing for a pivotal performance at the Coachella Festival in 2025.<\/p>\n
Offended and upset, some fans demanded an apology – but the band’s record label, forbade the members from issuing a statement.<\/p>\n
With Lisa’s team in crisis mode, documentarian Sue Kim followed Lisa into her dressing room.<\/p>\n
“I said, ‘Look, I know this is new. I know you guys are wildly confused and hurt, but this is your time to say whatever you want to say – even if you’re just processing your thoughts and telling us what you’re feeling,” Kim tells the BBC.<\/p>\n
The film-maker “honestly expected her to say no”.<\/p>\n
Instead, Lisa lay down on a sofa and spoke from the heart.<\/p>\n
“It’s bad,” the singer says in the documentary, with a mixture of shame and nerves.<\/p>\n
Lisa explains she was “15 or 16” when the videos were shot and “didn’t know that [word] was sensitive because I’m from Thailand and my first language is not English”.<\/p>\n
Having only heard the term in rap music, she was unaware of its offensive history.<\/p>\n
“Now I would never ever do that because, now, I’ve got education,” she says. “Now I know better.<\/p>\n
“But I did wrong.”<\/p>\n
It is a vulnerable and human response – and nothing like the scripted PR apology you might expect. (Lisa has since apologised publicly, external<\/a> in an interview with Variety, although some people remained unconvinced, external<\/a>).<\/p>\n Kim says Lisa\u2019s in-the-moment reaction is “one of the most important scenes” in her documentary, Always Lalisa, which hits cinemas on Monday, 12 October.<\/p>\n “There was no premeditation on Lisa’s part, there was no media training,” she adds.<\/p>\n “I asked her one question and she just talked for an hour, and everything came out, and it’s all stream of consciousness.<\/p>\n “And what you see with Lisa in that moment is so genuine, it’s impossible not to feel compassion for her.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What’s it like to be the main character of an online scandal? That’s one of the questions raised…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":928687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-928686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=928686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/928687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}