Gina Carano discussed her controversial social media posts and subsequent firing in depth.
Gina Carano was unceremoniously fired from Disney after months of controversial posts, with the company calling her now infamous Holocaust comparison “abhorrent and unacceptable.” The MMA fighter turned actress seems to have deflected some of the blame, saying she found out online that the hashtags calling for her firing “worked.”
Carano, who also lost out on being a star of her own Star Wars show, went on Ben Shapiro’s show to discuss the high profile firing.
“How I found out was that I looked on the internet, and you know, you check your Twitter and I’m trending and the ‘Fire Gina Carano’ hashtag worked,” she said.
“They were tracking the ‘Fire Gina Carano’ hashtag. They accidentally sent me an email, which was very enlightening, so I knew. I knew they were paying attention. I know there were some people who went to bat for me, but I know that they didn’t win out at the end.”
Before the final post that got her fired, one of those who reportedly went to bat for Carano previously was The Mandalorian’s creator, Jon Favreau, a Jewish man.
The Fire Gina Carano hashtag first trended back in November 2020, after her numerous social media posts pushing conspiracies about QAnon, COVID-19 and the Presidential election. She also previously faced backlash for using “boop/bop/beep” on her Twitter name, which was taken as a poor attempt to use Star Wars sounds made by R2-D2 to mock the use of preferred gender pronouns.
Carano admitted to Shapiro that she refused to use an apology drafter for her, and also declined to go on a Zoom meeting to talk to members of the Star Wars cast and crew that were part of the LGBTQ+ community.
The post that seemingly served as the last straw for Disney, is seen in full below. Carano says she actually thought the comparison would bring people together.
“Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…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 neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”
“When I posted that it wasn’t something that I felt was controversial. It was something that I thought, well, maybe all of us need to ask ourselves how that happened,” Carano said. “I thought it would bring people together… I have love for everyone. I’m not a hateful person.
“I like to post think-pieces. Those are what get me into trouble the most because that’s where everyone starts putting their opinion out there,” Carano said. “Why don’t you guys do your homework a little better? It doesn’t say ‘Republican’ and ‘conservative’ in that post.”
Carano also went on to claim that she was bullied by Disney.
“I’ve been through so much, and I’ve seen so much now, clearly, of the bullying that’s been taking place, and I saw it before,” Carano said. “I’m not the only one that’s ever been bullied by this company, and I know that so deeply.
“I was prepared at any point to be let go, because I’ve seen this happen to so many people. I’ve seen the looks on their faces. I’ve seen the bullying that takes place, and so when this started, they point their guns at you, and you know it’s only a matter of time. I’ve seen it happen to so many people, and I just thought to myself ‘you’re coming for me, I know you are.’ ” They’re making it very obvious through their employees who were coming for me, and so I was like, ‘I’m going to go down swinging and I’m going to stay true to myself.’
Apart from claiming to be being bullied and watched for months, Carano felt there was a double standard when it came to her political views.
“You know how boxers head-hunt sometimes and forget to go for the body? I feel like Disney or Lucasfilm or whoever it is, just certain people at that company. I feel like I’ve been being head-hunted for the last several months, and you can feel it. Just a couple of weeks ago, Lucasfilm asked an artist that they employ to erase my character and put a different character in place, and he proudly announces this on Twitter, and erases my character and puts another character in place. All the fans of Cara Dune were just outraged. They were like ‘Why didn’t you add the character? Why did you have to take off the character? Is there something wrong? Is Gina getting fired?”
“They’ve been all over me and they’ve been watching me like a hawk, and I’m watching people on the same production and they can say everything they want, and that’s where I had a problem. I had a problem because I wasn’t going along with the narrative…”
Shortly after the firing, Carano signed a movie deal with Shapiro’s right-wing website The Daily Wire.