Actress and former martial arts fighter Gina Carano announced on Tuesday that she has filed a lawsuit against the Walt Disney corporation and Lucasfilm, claiming she was falsely accused by the corporations of bigotry. X owner Elon Musk has endorsed the lawsuit and called for more people to join.
Carano had a prominent role on the streaming show ‘The Mandalorian’ for two seasons, as former Rebel fighter Cara Dune. In February 2021, however, Lucasfilm announced her firing, accusing Carano of “social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural & religious identities” and calling them “abhorrent & unacceptable.”
According to a post on X (formerly Twitter), Carano said she reached out to Musk after the platform owner offered legal help to people who lost their job because of their tweets. After several months of back-and-forth with the lawyers, they agreed to press her lawsuit.
“I would like to express my deepest gratitude and thank you to Elon Musk and X for giving me an opportunity to bring my case to light,” said Carano.
“Please let us know if you would like to join the lawsuit against Disney,” said Musk, reposting her message.
Carano urged everyone to look at the social media posts Disney and Lucasfilm had denounced. “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 said. “My words were consistently twisted to demonize and dehumanize me,” she added, describing the whole thing as “a bullying smear campaign aimed at silencing, destroying and making an example out of me.”
“Hollywood says they support female representation and equal rights,” added Carano. “Why then were my male co-stars permitted to speak without harassment & re-education courses or termination, but I was not afforded the same right to exercise my freedom of speech.”
Unlike Carano, who has been critical of President Joe Biden, Covid-19 vaccine mandates, and polarized partisan politics, ‘Mandalorian’ star Pedro Pascal has been an outspoken Democrat. However, she insisted, none of her colleagues bear her any ill will.
“Artists do not sign away our rights as American citizens when we enter into employment. I have spoken to all my co-stars since I was fired & there is nothing but care and kind words between us. I respect their right to free speech and do not have to think the same on every issue to be their friends and work with them and I know they feel the same towards me,” said Carano.
While Carano was quickly hired for a movie role by conservative producer and political commentator Ben Shapiro, she says it has been difficult to work in the industry “with the lies and labels stuck on me, backed and encouraged by the most powerful entertainment company in the world.”
Carano was criticized for putting “beep/bop/boop” as her ‘pronouns’ on X, after LGBTQ activists demanded she do so. The post for which she was allegedly fired said that demonizing people over their political opinions was what the Nazis did to make the Holocaust possible. Some US Democrats interpreted that as them being compared to Adolf Hitler.
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