A Hollywood insider says Universal Studios were concerned over Carano’s personal and political opinions.
Former MMA star Gina Carano’s acting career took a major hit this year when she was fired from the wildly popular The Mandalorian. Carano lost her role as Cara Dune on the Star Wars spin-off due to controversial social media posts.
In addition to being removed from the The Mandalorian, production on her character’s action figures and Funko Pop!s has also ceased. Yesterday it was reported that Carano had had her episode of Running Wild with Bear Grylls shelved, too.
We Got This Covered reports that Carano’s behaviour on social media has also scuppered plans for her to return to a separate Hollywood film franchise.
Carano appeared in Fast & Furious 6 in 2013, with her character—Riley Hicks—suffering a brutal on-screen death. However, according to insider Daniel Richtman Carano, who had seen her star rise thanks to The Mandalorian, was set to return to the Fast & Furious series, via some movie magic, to reprise her role.
Richtman tells We Got This Covered that Carano nearly rejoining Fast & Furious came despite his claim that she was originally written out of the series over concerns by Universal Studios.
Without presenting any evidence of this, Richtman states that Universal’s executives feared Carano could potentially cause them PR headaches based on her personal and political opinions.
Carano does not have a long history of controversial social media posts or statements. 2020 is thought to be the first year that Carano began sharing views that were met with immediate backlash.
Among those 2020 posts were anti-mask memes related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation that falls under the Qanon umbrella and a post that compared being attacked for your political beliefs today to being Jewish during the Holocaust.
After being released from her Star Wars contract by Disney-owned LucasFilm, Carano signed a deal to appear in movies produced through Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire.