Welp, it’s been in the wind for a while but Gina Carano finally posted enough nonsense online for Lucasfilm to categorically state that it has no plans to work with her in the future and that her views are “abhorrent and unacceptable,” so it looks like we’ve seen the last of former Rebel shock trooper Cara Dune in Disney+’s hugely popular Star Wars series, The Mandalorian.
“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” said Lucasfilm in a statement. “Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
A source told THR that Lucasfilm had “been looking for a reason to fire [Carano] for two months, and today was the final straw.” This was swiftly followed by confirmation from her talent agency UTA that they’d dropped her as a client.
We need to recap the situation a little for those who just have absolutely no clue what led to Carano’s dismissal. The short version: the actress has posted COVID conspiracy theories, mocked the idea of adding pronouns to her Twitter bio, declined to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement, and has suggested that there was voter fraud in the 2020 US election on social media. Inevitably, she then joined Parler – a social network populated largely by conservatives, conspiracy theorists, and right-wing extremists – following the subsequent online backlash.
It’s been a bit of a PR nightmare for Lucasfilm and UTA that showed no signs of abating, and it culminated this week when Carano posted some thoughts to her Instagram that likened having right-wing political views to being Jewish in the Holocaust, featuring a picture of the 1941 Lviv pogroms.
Carano was on her way to record an interview with The Babylon Bee – a kind of evangelical version of The Onion – before the news broke of her firing, and has yet to respond to the situation at the time of writing.
As official information regarding Carano being let go from The Mandalorian started circulating, news also arrived that her co-star Pedro Pascal had been cast as the lead in HBO’s highly anticipated The Last of Us TV series. Earlier in the week, Pascal had been online showing public support for his sister Lux, who had announced that she identifies as a transgender woman in Chilean magazine, Ya.
The move to fire Carano has created quite the conversation online, as you’d expect, with many noting that the Haywire actress was getting to taste some sparkling consequences.
Carano’s supporters/conservatives were rather more outraged by her firing than those who had expected it to happen quite some time ago, and many of them went on to tweet their disappointment under the hashtag #CancelDisneyPlus.