Gina Carano, a former MMA fighter who had made the transition into acting, was recently fired from her role in the popular Disney+ Star Wars series The Mandalorian over a number of controversial social media posts. Issues included Carano refusing to bow to fan pressure to add pronouns to her Twitter bio or post in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and posting memes and comments questioning COVID lockdowns, mask mandates, and the validity of the 2020 presidential election. Carano, who played Cara Dune in the first two seasons of The Mandalorian, sat down with Ben Shapiro over the weekend for her first interview about the situation and shared her side of the story.
Carano says her first issues with Disney and Lucasfilm came after she added "Beep. Bop. Booop" to her Twitter bio where many people list their pronouns in solidarity with the transgender community. Carano says this was in response to the Twitter mob harassing her to add pronouns to her bio:
“I ended up putting 'Beep. Bop. Boop' in my Twitter bio…It was 100% towards the Twitter mob telling me what to do, and it had zero to do with trying to go after the transgender Community because I would never do that…I literally said to my friend, ‘let’s put something in my bio just to show I can put whatever I want in my bio’…I just put these noises in my bio, and, uh, there was this crazy meltdown.”
She says this led to Disney and her publicist insisting that she meet with representatives from an internal LGBTQ section. Carano says that meeting went well, that they seemed to understand where she was coming from. There followed a lot of back and forth with Lucasfilm about Carano issuing a public apology that she would not agree to. Next Lucasfilm began cutting Carano out of publicity for the show. As all of this was playing out, Carano continued to tweet about mask mandates, pandemic shutdowns, and voter fraud, and #FireGinaCarano was frequently trending on Twitter.
The final straw for Disney and Lucasfilm seems to have been an Instagram Story post seen by many to compare the plight of modern day conservatives to that of Jewish people during the Holocaust. The post read as follows:
Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors...even by children. 🙁
Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?
Following that post, Lucasfilm released the statement below:
“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
Carano says that she has no hate for anyone and didn't see the post as controversial. Her intent was to comment on the way are tearing each other apart over our political differences. She goes on to say that, after hearing from so many people over this, she's grown to better understand the weight of throwing around the word Nazi.
The full, lengthy interview is linked above and in the tweet below. You should really watch and get Carano's side of the story in her own words.
Photo: Getty Images