“Avengers” actress Evangeline Lilly rebuked Disney over layoffs affecting Marvel employees in its visual development department, calling the move “disgusting and horrible” in a video posted to Instagram Thursday.
Lilly, who portrayed Hope van Dyne, also known as The Wasp, in four Marvel films, said she learned about the layoffs from friend Andy Park, a longtime Marvel visual development artist who helped create early Wasp suit concepts.
“I reached out to my good friend Andy Park, who was the genius behind creating the original Wasp supersuit and the original Wasp concept drawings for the film ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp,’ and just said, ‘Is this true? Is this really what’s happening?’” Lilly recalled. “And he said, ‘Yeah, it’s true. I have been let go.’
“I can’t quite believe that,” Lilly continued. “That Disney have let go of the artists who brought the current Marvel Universe to life through their imagination and their genius.
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“That the people who invented these characters in the first place, who designed them in the first place, are now being replaced by AI. AI that will take their designs and take what those artists created and use it to create iterations of that.”
Lilly also expressed sympathy for the broader group of Disney employees swept up in the cuts and especially for Marvel artists she said had become “obsolete” after helping build the franchise.
“These were human creations, and they shouldn’t be stolen by tech giants so that their robots can replicate them,” Lilly added. “I think it’s disgusting and horrible, and I stand with all the artists and Andy.”
In the caption accompanying her video, she tagged Disney, writing “SHAME ON YOU” and urged California lawmakers to act.
“Where are the laws that REMOVE all human art from the AI bank?!? Why do they get to steal our brilliance and use it to make executives rich while the artists responsible for feeding their robots go hungry?? Disgusting. California lawmakers…where are you?!?!” she wrote.
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Disney confirmed earlier this month it would be laying off 1,000 employees across the company. In a memo obtained by Fox News Digital, CEO Josh D’Amaro said the company had been reviewing ways to streamline operations and “foster a more agile and technologically-enabled workforce.”
“Over the past several months, we have looked at ways in which we can streamline our operations in various parts of the company to ensure we deliver the world-class creativity and innovation our fans value and expect from Disney,” D’Amaro wrote.
“Given the fast-moving pace of our industries, this requires us to constantly assess how to foster a more agile and technologically-enabled workforce to meet tomorrow’s needs.”
Disney’s statement does not explicitly say the layoffs were driven by AI, and the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Lilly’s allegation that artists were being replaced by artificial intelligence.
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Initial reports indicated that 8% of Marvel’s workforce was cut, though Disney later disputed that number, telling The Wrap the number was “much smaller.”
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Disney did not immediately return Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Fox News’ Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.
