Actor and former MMA fighter Gina Carano is no longer employed by Lucasfilm or represented by the UTA following her decision to share a post on social media that compared the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust to “hating someone for their political views.”
Carano, who has played the character of Cara Dune for seasons one and two on Disney’s The Mandalorian, is an outspoken conservative who has previously sparked controversy for mocking the use of masks during the global COVID-19 pandemic and promoting disproven allegations of mass voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Carano also received widespread criticism in September for listing her pronouns as “boop/bop/beep” on Twitter, appearing to make fun of a common practice by trans and nonbinary people and allies. Carano later wrote that her Mandalorian co-star Pedro Pascal had helped educate her on the use of pronouns in social media bios, saying, “He helped me understand why people were putting them in their bios. I didn’t know before but I do now. I won’t be putting them in my bio but good for all you who choose to.” She also shared a follow-up post insisting that her intention wasn’t to mock trans people.
It was a post shared to her Instagram story yesterday, however, that seemed to be the final straw for Lucasfilm. The post that Carano re-shared from another account said, “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?”
The hashtag #FireGinaCarano began circulating widely on social media following Carano’s decision to share the post, and it wasn’t long before a Lucasfilm spokesperson released the following statement to a variety of news and entertainment outlets: “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
The Hollywood Reporter also shared the news that Carano had been dropped as a client by the United Talent Agency following the latest controversy.
Reportedly, there were also plans for Disney+ to release another series set in the Star Wars universe with Carano as the lead, but the actor’s tweets in November prompted the network to scrap the series.
Carano went 7-1 during her professional MMA career, which spanned from 2006 to 2009. Her last fight resulted in a TKO at the hands of Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino at a Strikeforce event.
How do people in a sport of choking get so soft?