Gina Carano has opened up about her termination from Disney+‘s The Mandalorian saying “It became very popular to hate me and pick on me.”
The former MMA champion turned actress played the lead role of Cara Dune in The Mandalorian, a role which was written by series creator John Favreau with her specifically in mind. Her stint on the series didn’t last long as roughly a year after the show’s premiere, Carano was fired from the show.
She was let go from the Disney+ Star Wars spinoff series after making posts on social media that the company deemed “abhorrent and unacceptable”. She was made aware she was being laid off at the same time everyone else did when Lucasfilm shared a statement that revealed she was no longer employed by them.
“I just laid down and cried and cried,” Carano recalled in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “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.”
The actor previously faced calls to be fired from the show after posting anti-mask tweets, unfounded claims of voter fraud and other posts that were criticised as transphobic. Users on Twitter tagged the accounts belonging to The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau, Disney, Disney Plus, Star Wars and Lucasfilm, along with the hashtag #FireGinaCarano.
“It became very popular to hate me and pick on me,” the actor told the publication. “The Hollywood press and major news outlets coupled me into this extreme right-wing thing that I am not,” she says.
Carano recently said that trying to find work since her firing from Disney has been like “sitting in the desert”. She also recently filed a lawsuit against Disney and its subsidiary Lucasfilm, alleging that the production companies wrongfully terminated her from The Mandalorian and other Star Wars titles for sharing a range of far-right opinions. It was revealed that Elon Musk said he would help to fund Carano’s suit.
“You become unhirable,” she said to The Hollywood Reporter. “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.’ ”
Alongside her firing from The Mandalorian, an upcoming project centred on Cara Dune — titled Rangers of the New Republic — was removed from Lucasfilm’s release schedule. Carano also claimed that Disney omitted her image and likeness in promotional materials for an episode of Running Wild with Bear Grylls in which she guest starred, as part of what the lawsuit describes as a “post-termination smear campaign”.
Carano was dropped by her agency, UTA, in 2021. Now, Carano’s wrongful termination lawsuit has alleged that Lucasfilm harassed and defamed her for refusing to conform to their views on topics relating Black Lives Matter, preferred pronouns and false claims of electoral fraud.
The suit also alleges that her male co-stars, including The Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal, were able to post derogatory statements about conservatives and Republicans without punishment.
The suit details an alleged incident in which Carano was required by Disney to meet with a GLAAD spokesperson, following online posts that were deemed anti-trans. After refusing to attend both that meeting and another involving LGBTQIA+ Disney employees, Carano was terminated.
Carano is claiming wrongful discharge and sexual discrimination, seeking $75,000 in damages and a court order that would require her to be recast on The Mandalorian.
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