(Twitter/@Reyanfar)

When ABC Family ordered the pilot, it was described as a “high-stakes drama” about an American girl who gets kidnapped by her Saudi Arabian family when her parents are victims of a tragic car accident. 

It wasn’t long before people took to social media to voice their issues with the pilot. Many saw the project as another example of Hollywood mischaracterizing Muslims and encouraging Islamophobia. 

A Buzzfeed article spurred the controversy by revealing the problems that exist not only in the network’s description of the show, but in the pilot’s script as well. Despite acknowledging Eikmeier’s apparent “familiarity with Saudi Arabia,” but calls the script “light on nuance” and took issue with several “notable cultural errors.”

After a few attempts to reach out the Arab-American community, ABC Family instead chose to avoid the controversy altogether and scrapped the project.

READ MORE: Saudi Arabian Women Protest Driving Laws Online 

In her column, Eikmeier defends the “Alice in Arabia,” saying her intentions were to create a show that “would be a step forward in exposing and discussing female issues in a complex and diverse world.” 

She notes that her experience with the military extends beyond learing the Arabic language, but also gave her a chance to immerse herself in Saudi Arabian culture. Her interactions with Saudi Arabian women, in particular, gave her the insight and inspiration to write the pilot.

Eikmeier also says that she did not approve of the ABC Family’s description of the project.

“This clumsy description employed key inflammatory words highlighting Alice’s emotional starting point without any hint at where I was intending to go with her or the show and was written by someone who did not have cultural training or an appreciation of the greater ambition I was aiming for,” she says.

In the final paragraphs, she calls the response to the project “reactionary” and blames the “mob” for the cancellation of the project. 

She writes that the response was based on assumptions about what the pilot would be rather than what she had written. She calls the Buzzfeed article criticizing her script a “hit job.”