How Tabyana Ali Turned the Tables on Her Online Attackers

Earlier this year, General Hospital star Tabyana Ali (Trina) found herself at the center of some terrible, racist messages that were shared by some soap viewers on Twitter/X. While the horrible things said about her by the group of online trolls naturally hurt her feelings, Ali has opened up about how she emotionally dealt with the awful comments and how she learned to flip the script.

Sitting down with co-star Maurice Benard (Sonny) for a chat on his State Of Mind YouTube series, Ali explained how mean comments and threats left here and there by users on the social media platform ultimately culminated in a barrage of hurtful posts made about her following the Daytime Emmy Awards. “I just kept seeing people talking about how I looked like a monkey in my dress. And it was just sitting on my feed; I kept seeing people reply to it or talk about it,” she recalled. “So, then I was like, ‘Well, I’m kind of tired of this now. Maybe I should say something, because not saying anything is way worse than just ignoring it.’”

Ali added that while she’s typically able to ignore comments when people post that they don’t like her makeup or what she’s wearing, she drew a hard line at those racist posts. “Ignoring it would be bad on my part, so I decided to say something,” she explained. “So I put out a couple of tweets . And to be quite honest, I was kind of being a little sassy. Nobody took it as that, though. Everybody looked at that tweet and was like, ‘She’s so kind.’ I was trying to be mean!”

Most outlets ( Soaps In Depth included!) praised Ali for taking the high road in responding to her online haters. “Which I think is a more positive way,” the GH star confessed, adding that she realized that she needed to extend “grace” and “compassion” to those who were throwing her shade. “You’ve got to understand that this really isn’t about you,” she suggested. “They win if you give them the same energy. They want you to come back and be angry, [have] a little animosity. I sat back and realized, ‘You’re not saying this for me, you’re saying this for you and for whatever situation you’re going through… because you’re fighting some demons and battles inside of yourself.’ And I can only look at you as somebody that I feel sorry for. Like a genuine, I’m sorry that you even have to go through that.”

The incident — which Ali admitted “became bigger than I anticipated” when even mainstream and international outlets picked up her story — led the actress to delete her Twitter account. But she remains grateful to all her followers who had her back during that low point. “I’m so appreciative that there’s somebody willing to step up and do something and say something,” she noted.

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