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Gina Carano is suing Disney and Lucasfilm, accusing the company of discrimination and wrongful termination, after she was fired from The Mandalorian for voicing right-wing opinion on social media.
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According to the Hollywood Reporter, Elon Musk is helping pay Carano’s legal costs after he pledged to help users of X (formerly Twitter) who claim they have been persecuted for their activity on his platform.
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In a complaint filed in California federal court, Carano is seeking an order that would force Lucasfilm to recast her after she was canned in February 2021.
In a statement, X’s head of business operations, Joe Benarroch told the Hollywood Reporter, “As a sign of X Corp’s commitment to free speech, we’re proud to provide financial support for Gina Carano’s lawsuit, empowering her to seek vindication of her free speech rights on X and the ability to work without bullying, harassment, or discrimination.”
On X, Carano thanked Musk “for giving me an opportunity to bring my case to light.”
“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,” Carano wrote. “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.”
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Carano, who played Cara Dune on the Disney+ series, ran afoul of the Walt Disney Co.-owned movie studio after she shared social media posts that drew parallels between the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany and Americans who hold conservative viewpoints.
“Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbours … even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbours hate them simply for being Jews,” the 41-year-old shared on her Instagram story. “How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”
“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” the company said in a statement after #FireGinaCarano became a trending topic on social media. “Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
