Los Angeles – An Elon Musk X-backed “Star Wars” actor is suing Disney for firing her over inflammatory social media posts about the Holocaust, the pandemic and trans rights.
Gina Carano, who starred in the wildly popular Disney+ series “The Mandalorian” until 2021, filed a wrongful termination lawsuit in California on Tuesday.
The lawsuit says Carano expressed personal political views but was hounded by an “extremely progressive” online crowd, and claims that Disney’s actions and comments have damaged her reputation and ability to find work in the future.
“Today is a big day for me – I’m suing @lucasfilm & @Disney,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter. The lawsuit is being funded by Company X, a spokesperson for the company confirmed to AFP.
Carano, an outspoken former martial artist turned actor, was fired by Disney for what the company called at the time “vile and unacceptable” social media posts that “denigrated people based on their cultural and religious identity.”
One particularly controversial post Carano shared appeared to compare conservatives in the United States to being Jews in Nazi Germany. “Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews” because “the government first made their own neighbors hate them just because they were Jews,” the post said.
“How is that different from hating someone for their political views?” she concluded with a graphic photograph of a Jewish woman being beaten in Nazi Germany. Another post appeared to mock a person for wearing multiple masks during the Covid-19 pandemic in California.
And Carano previously drew the ire of members of the trans community for adding “boop/bop/beep” as preferred pronouns to her Twitter profile.
In a statement Tuesday, Carano said she “never used aggressive language” but shared “thought-provoking” posts with “respect and occasional comedy.”
Both her statement and the lawsuit allege that Carano had less right to exercise her free speech than some of her male colleagues.
Carano said she was contacted by X’s lawyer who offered to take her case after she publicly responded to an open offer from Musk to help anyone who was fired after using X to exercise free speech.
“As a sign of X Corp’s commitment to freedom of expression, we are proud to provide financial support for Gina Carano’s lawsuit,” X said in an official post on Tuesday.
The suit does not specify the amount of damages Carano is seeking, but claims she lost a role in the planned “Mandalorian” spin-off “Rangers of the New Republic,” which would be worth “$150,000 to $250,000 per episode.” Disney did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.
