Actress suing Disney, Lucasfilm over firing
Actress Gina Carano said she is suing Disney and Lucasfilm over her firing from “The Mandalorian” in 2021 following a post she made on social media, saying she was not “afforded the same right to exercise my freedom of speech” as her male co-stars.
Lucasfilm, which is based in San Francisco, appeared to terminate Carano from her role in the hit Disney+ series following an Instagram post she created appearing to compare “hating someone for their political views” to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust, the New York Times reported. The post, which prompted widespread criticism, has since been deleted from her Instagram account.
“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” Lucasfilm said in a statement to National Public
Radio after the post. “Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
In August, when X CEO Elon Musk offered legal representation to people who had been “unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform,” Carano jumped at the opportunity and replied, “I think I qualify.” She said she didn’t expect to receive a response but was contacted “a few months ago” by a lawyer who she said was hired by X to investigate her story.
“Turns out after sending them as much information as I could gather these past few months, my now lawyers & X believe whole-heartedly in my case & are moving forward,” Carano said.
In her post Tuesday, Carano pushed back at the notion she had made the hateful comparison. “Look with your own eyes at what I posted and ask yourself, for example, where did I compare Republicans to the Jewish people in the holocaust?” she said. “I didn’t. Ask yourself why they were calling me a racist, was there any merit behind that or history of it whatsoever?”
“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 & dehumanize me as an alt right wing extremist. It was a bullying smear campaign aimed at silencing, destroying & making an example out of me.”