UPDATE 02/11/2021: The “Fire Gina Carano campaign seems to have finally hit a head. The actress has been let go from the Star Wars series The Mandalorian after posting social media statements that a Lucasfilm rep called “abhorrent and unacceptable.” Carano has also been dropped by her agents at UTA.
Get the full story here, or skip to the bottom for the update about Carano’s firing.
The First Controversy
Not long ago, cancel culture set its sights on actress Gina Carano. The former MMA fighter and star of the Disney+ Star Wars series The Mandalorian was called out for anti-mask and voter fraud tweets. Like they did a couple of months before, fans were demanding producers fire Gina Carano from the show.
Here’s how it played out.
Back in September, Carano’s Twitter followers asked if she would add pronouns to her Twitter bio in order to demonstrate her support for the trans community. Using pronouns is something trans and non-binary people often do so they will not be misgendered. Examples would be she/her/hers or they/them/theirs.
Carano, who felt she was being harassed “in every way,” decided to add the words “boop/bob/beep” to her Twitter bio instead of actual pronouns. Presumably, it was a reference to the droids from the Star Wars universe. Fans didn’t think it was funny and immediately called for her removal from the show.
Then in November, the 38-year-old Texan found herself in hot water again. And, once again, fans of the sci-fi Western were insisting she be killed off the show. This time Carano had ruffled feathers by posting anti-mask and voter fraud tweets. And she upset some of her more liberal-minded fans by encouraging them to join her on a social media app favored by Republican politicians.
The Second Offense
Shortly after the presidential election in November, Carano tweeted a meme that read: “Democratic government leaders now recommends (sic) we all wear blindfolds along with masks so we can’t see what’s really going on.”
Carano took it up a notch by following President Trump’s lead and making baseless claims about election voter fraud. She wrote a long tweet saying that we should “investigate every state” and “flush out the fake votes.”
Carano’s tweet read: “We need to clean up the election process so we are not left feeling the way we do today. Put laws in place that protect us against voter fraud. Investigate every state. Film the counting. Flush out the fake votes. Require ID. Make Voter Fraud end in 2020. Fix the system.”
According to Insider, Carano has also promoted a social media app called Parler, which has been lauded by right-wing pundits. Parler claims to be a place where people can practice “free speech” without worrying about pesky “fact checkers.” Some of Carano’s Twitter followers have not responded well to her promotion of Parler, with one fan calling the app a platform for “right wing racists.”
Another Twitter user took it further. He accused Carano of promoting “hateful, bigoted views,” of furthering conspiracy theories about the presidential election, of implying that COVID is a hoax, and even of liking tweets about shooting protestors. This fan wrote that Carano, who plays a former Rebel soldier in The Mandalorian, is “not part of the Rebellion.”
Not surprisingly, the hashtag #FireGinaCarano started trending. However, at that point The Mandalorian was airing its second season on a weekly basis, so it was too late for Disney to write Carano’s character off the show, if that is indeed what they want to do.
At that point, there was no indication that Disney planned to fire Carano.
UPDATE 2/11/2021 — Gina Carano Fired
Last night it was announced that the actress was fired from The Mandalorian after a string of controversial social media posts. Lucasfilm says they have no plans to hire her again in the future.
On Wednesday, Carano took to Instagram to post a photo of a running, screaming Jewish woman being chased by thugs in Nazi Germany. Carano suggested that the way conservatives are treated in America today is no different than how the Jews were treated by the Germans during the Holocaust.
“Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children,” Carano wrote. “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.”
One woman tweeted the following in response to Carano’s post: “as a jewish person, this is fucking vile and unnecessary. gina carano needs to be held accountable. the oppression my people have faced because of our religion and ethnicity is NOT the same as political disagreements.”
Carano also posted a photo of someone wearing three face masks. The caption read, “Meanwhile in California.” Both posts have since been deleted from Instagram, but not before people took screenshots.
While the hashtag #FireGinaCarano has been trending once again, Carano’s fans have been attempting to get the hashtag #weloveginacarano to trend as well. Meanwhile, #CancelDisneyPlus has been widely circulated by furious conservatives who are urging people to give up their subscription to the popular streaming service in support of Carano.
Republican Senator Ted Cruz came to Carano’s defense on Twitter.
“Texan Gina Carano broke barriers in the Star Wars universe: not a princess, not a victim, not some emotionally tortured Jedi,” Cruz wrote. “She played a woman who kicked ass & who girls looked up to. She was instrumental in making Star Wars fun again. Of course Disney canceled her.”
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Fire Gina Carano — Sources
Insider
NME
Los Angeles Times
Deadline
Newsweek
USA Today