The legal and cultural cage-match between Gina Carano and the Walt Disney Company over the Mouse House deep-sixing the former MMA from The Mandalorian in 2021 just saw more blood spilled.
“Disney has confirmed what has been known all along, they will fire you if you say anything they disagree with, even if they have to MISREPRESENT, MALIGN, and MISCHARACTERIZE you to do it,” wrote Carano today (capitalization hers) on social media.
“They are now on record letting everyone who works for them know that Disney will take any chance they get to control what you say, what you think or they will attempt to destroy your career,” she added a day after Disney filed a motion to dismiss Carano’s wrongful discharge and sex discrimination lawsuit over her firing from Mandalorian. “Glad we cleared that up.”
The unequivocal response from the one-time Star Wars series actor rebukes Disney’s claim that the Carano “trivialized the Holocaust” in social media postings, among other things. In that context, the Bob Iger-led company says it was perfectly within its First Amendment right to terminate Carano.
As in her Elon Musk-baked complaint filed in federal court on February 6 made clear, the actor who played Rebel ranger Cara Dune on the Jon Favreau co-created Disney+ bounty hunter series disagrees. “The First Amendment does not allow Disney to wantonly DISCRIMINATE, which is what they have done in my case and frankly have now admitted they did,” Carano said Thursday. “If you ever wanted to know what today’s “Disney values” are, they just told you.”
Disney had no comment on Carano’s post today. What the board battled scarred company, which purchased Star Wars creator George Lucas’ Lucasfilms in 2012 for just over $4 billion, said in their dismissal filing yesterday is they want a June 12 hearing on their dismissal motion before Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett in downtown Los Angeles.
A rising action star on the big and small screen since her lead role in Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 flick Haywire, fan fave Carano was cut from The Mandalorian on February 10, 2021 after a series of controversial postings, “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” said Lucasfilm in announcing her departure. “Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
Citing idealogical and cultural clashes with the power-that-be at Disney and Lucasfilm, as well as a sexist double standard, Carano in her initial suit stated that her “words were consistently twisted to demonize & dehumanize me as an alt right wing extremist.”
To that, Carano wants a jury to decide to put her back on The Mandalorian and award her a variety of damages.
In the meantime, Carano has teamed up with conservative outlets The Daily Wire and Breitbart News to appear in films such as Terror on the Prairie and as a Secret Service agent in My Son Hunter. A fourth season of the Pedro Pascal-led Mandalorian has been given the green light, but may be on pause as Favereau and team prepare The Mandalorian & Grogu feature film, set for a May 2026 opening.
