Gina Carano is suing Disney and Lucasfilm over her firing from the TV show The Mandalorian, with help from Elon Musk.
The MMA fighter turned actor, who played Cara Dune in the Star Wars series, was accused of “denigrating people based on their cultural & religious identities” on social media in posts that were called “abhorrent and unacceptable”.
Carano had used her online presence to share a post that implied that being a Republican is similar to being Jewish during Nazi Germany, ridicule mask-wearing during the worst days of Covid-19 and spread conspiracy theories over the 2020 election.
After a long-running fan campaign, she was removed from the show in 2021 and later dropped by her agency UTA. “The truth is I was being hunted down from everything I posted to every post I liked because I was not in line with the acceptable narrative of the time,” she wrote on Twitter/X.
She claims to have used words “not with aggression but with respect & the occasional comedy to keep the mood light in dark times”.
In a new complaint filed this week, Carano claims she was “harassed and defamed” for having rightwing opinions and refusing to conform to those held by Disney and Lucasfilm. She also claims that her male co-stars were allowed to post derogatory statements about Republicans without punishment. Carano is claiming wrongful discharge and sexual discrimination, seeking $75,000 in damages and a court order that would reinstate her on the hit series.
The suit details that Carano was required by Disney to meet with a representative from the LGBTQ+ group Glaad after online behaviour that was seen as anti-trans, yet she refused. She was then asked to meet with a group of LGBTQ+ Disney employees but again refused and was fired soon after.
The suit refers to Disney and Lucasfilm as using “bullying, discriminatory, and retaliatory actions”.
In 2023, Musk had pledged to help anyone who had faced employment discrimination over what they posted on the platform. In a statement, X’s head of business operations, Joe Benarroch, said: “As a sign of X Corp’s commitment to free speech, we’re proud to provide financial support for Gina Carano’s lawsuit, empowering her to seek vindication of her free speech rights on X and the ability to work without bullying, harassment, or discrimination.”
Carano wrote that she had the “deepest gratitude” for Musk assisting her in the case. “I am grateful someone has come to my defense in such a powerful way & look forward to clearing my name,” she added.
Since her firing from the show, Carano has partnered with Ben Shapiro’s rightwing site the Daily Wire to make the western Terror on the Prairie. She also starred alongside Laurence Fox in My Son Hunter, a Breitbart-distributed drama about Hunter Biden. She referred to Fox as one “of my favourite humans”. Last month, Fox lost a libel battle after he called two gay men paedophiles on X.
Disney and Lucasfilm have yet to make any statement.
