Shameik Moore is a victim of his own success. In 2018, the world was his oyster — he had just appeared in a star-making turn with his film Dope and got a huge hit as the voice actor of Miles Morales in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Since then, Moore seems to be stuck on the internet’s mockery of being the only Spider-Man who never dated a co-star. And if you’re thinking that’s something weird to care about — so does Laura Harrier.
It all started when Moore was on his press run for the Spider-Verse films with Hailee Steinfeld, and he continuously complimented her on her beauty. Actors are generally complementary and supportive of each other; cases where actors don’t support their peers are quite rare and usually politically motivated. But Moore’s insistent focus on Steinfeld’s beauty soon started rubbing fans the wrong way, and some users began posting videos of a mash-up of all the times during a press interview Moore seemingly tried to flirt with Steinfeld, and she didn’t appear to be receptive to his passes. It started feeling like Moore just couldn’t take a hint.
The story then took an awkwardly amusing turn when Hailee Steinfeld announced her engagement to Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen. And, as is the nature of the internet, people immediately took that as a green light to start making fun of Moore. It certainly didn’t help that this was the time Moore chose to post on X, “There’s still more people to meet.” Whether that was related to Steinfeld or not is anyone’s guess, but what is clear is that the news ended up bothering Moore, and he decided to “respond.”
That’s how Laura Harrier got dragged into all of this mess that she probably didn’t even know about.
Recently, Moore posted a video of himself with Harrier on his social media pages, with a song of his in the background and the caption “coming soon.” Now, for the uninitiated in the vast and somewhat confusing Spider-Man lore, Laura Harrier technically is a Spider-Man girlfriend since she played Liz Allan in the Tom Holland-led Spider-Man franchise. His fans finally saw this as a win and started making jokes in the comments about how Moore had redeemed himself and was probably insinuating that he was dating the actress.
There were only two problems, though: Laura Harrier is engaged, and the video was taken a year ago. Harrier reached out privately to Moore to take the video down since it was giving people the wrong idea, but he ignored her, and Harrier had no choice but to take to TikTok and air out her frustration, calling Moore out directly for being a “f***ing weirdo.”
Moore has since issued an apology and taken down the post, but it’s far too late for that. The actor has already cemented himself as the chief loser of the year as far as the internet is concerned. Moore could have avoided all this if he had taken a hint from Steinfeld the first time.
In situations like this, you’ll always find a man at the center of it who has deep-rooted insecurities and feels the need to prove to others that he’s actually worthy of admiration. But in reality, they only need to find a way to admire themselves.
We’re not going to try and psychoanalyze Shameik Moore, but if you find yourself chasing after women who clearly don’t want you and you are doing it all because you think they’ll bring you clout, take a step back and ask do some self-introspection. As for the future of the Spiderverse films, it remains to be seen if Moore’s antics have jeopardized its success or just his time as Miles Morales.