Gina Carano Breaks Silence on Mandalorian Firing, Says Disney Lawsuit Is About ‘Clearing My Name’
More than three years after her firing from The Mandalorian, actress Gina Carano is opening up about her dismissal from the series, as well as the lawsuit she has subsequently brought against Disney and Lucasfilm.
Carano, who played Rebel shock trooper-turned-New Republic marshal Cara Dune on the flagship Disney+ series, was let go in February 2021, after she’d begun making headlines for her social media activity. At the time, Carano had been accused of being anti-trans (in part by posting the words “boop/bop/beep” as her “pronouns” in her Twitter bio, seen by many as a display of mockery toward the transgender community), racist, anti-mask (during the COVID-19 pandemic), anti-vaccination and a potential supporter of the attempted Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Not long before her firing, Carano had published an Instagram post that was interpreted to be an antisemitic defense of Nazis (stating that Jews in World War II were not beaten by German soldiers but “by their neighbors”).
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In announcing Lucasfilm’s decision to sever ties with Carano, a rep for the company called Carano’s recent social media posts “abhorrent and unacceptable.”
“I just laid down and cried and cried,” Carano said of the Mandalorian firing in a new Hollywood Reporter interview. “I curled into a fetal position. It’s not that I didn’t think that something like that could happen. It was that I couldn’t imagine they would put out this horrendous statement about me after working with me — the most powerful entertainment company in the world saying that about me.”
Carano has since sued Disney and Lucasfilm for discrimination and wrongful termination, and confirmed to THR that X owner Elon Musk is footing her legal bills. Though Carano has not directly communicated with Musk since her complaint was filed on Feb. 6, she called his financial assistance “pretty incredible” and claimed Musk is “using his money to fight massive injustice battles.”
“You become unhirable,” she continued. “And then it becomes OK for other people to disrespect you. And then you’re just carrying around this disrespect, and you’re shouldering all this shame, and it affects your physicality, your mentality. You’re just kind of hopeless. So to be able to fight back — it makes me feel like, ‘OK. That feels good.’ ”
Carano took particular issue with the pushback she received for posting “boop/bop/beep” in her Twitter bio, words she said were meant to be “cute, like R2-D2.” Instead, Lucasfilm and Disney allegedly had Carano participate in what she calls a “reeducation camp” with GLAAD representatives, followed by media training.
“Boop/bop/beep? Seriously?” Carano said. “This was the start of the end for me? A 20-year career, the blood, sweat and tears of fighting? I never compromised myself for a job. I never ended in a bad situation where I did anything inappropriate. I had a clean and clear climb to where I got to and was going to just keep going. And boop/bop/beep was that harmful?
“You won’t find a perfect person in me, but you will find a person who was doing her absolute best under one of the most aggressive unnecessary cancellations in Hollywood history,” she continued. “This has been one of the toughest growth spurts of my life and I don’t plan on wasting what I have learned… I’m thinking about clearing my name. I’m thinking about finally being healthier and having this monkey off my back and telling my story and just getting on with my life. Finally.”
TVLine has reached out to Disney and Lucasfilm for comment.
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