Gina Carano declared she wasn’t going down without a fight in her first interview since being fired from the Disney+ series The Mandalorian, accusing the company of bullying her and having a double standard.
Carano broke her silence to her new boss Ben Shapiro, sitting down with the conservative commentator for a special Sunday episode of The Ben Shapiro Show where she claimed she’d learned over social media that she had been axed from the Star Wars franchise earlier this month.
The former MMA fighter had faced widespread backlash when she reshared a post that suggested being a conservative in 2021 was similar to being Jewish during the Holocaust. Lucasfilm swiftly cut ties with her, saying Carano’s “social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.” Prior to that Holocaust post, Carano had also mocked trans usage of pronouns, shared QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracies, and is an avowed COVID skeptic who’s repeatedly downplayed both the pandemic and mask-wearing.
There was radio silence from Carano about her firing until Shapiro announced she had teamed up with his conservative news and opinion site The Daily Wire to produce a movie that she would star in. He later said he’d be having an on-camera, sit-down interview to discuss her dismissal—news shared by Carano on Twitter, along with the message: “Become a member [of The Daily Wire] and get 25% off memberships using code: GINA.”
Carano came out swinging against Disney, admitting the writing had been on the wall since she had crisis talks with higher-ups last year after she was accused of being transphobic.
“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,” she 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… 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.’” (Carano did not name any of these supposed people.)
“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,” Carano added.
She also accused Disney of having a double standard, saying executives had been “watching [her] like a hawk,” but other people “on the same production [could] 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,” Carano added. “I could share a story and would turn things around in the media, but I can’t do that because it would be selling out a friend that I don’t really have the same views as but I’m not gonna sell out someone to take the attention off me… everyone is afraid of losing their jobs.”
Lucasfilm did not respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment by time of publication.
Over the course of the hour-long interview, Carano said she considers herself conservative, admitting she only recently became interested in politics and one of Shapiro’s books had helped form her opinions.
She only briefly touches on the post that got her fired, which included a photo of a Jewish woman in her undergarments screaming as she ran away from men and young boys armed with clubs in Ukraine in 1941 during the Lviv pogroms.
“Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors… even by children,” the post that originated elsewhere read. “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?”
Carano insisted she wasn’t trying to make comparisons, saying she’s “so inspired by the gentle spirit of the Jewish people going through” the Holocaust.
She said her only intention was to “bring people together” and that she believed the post was “more about people tearing each other apart.”
When Shapiro tried to pivot the conversation to a lighter tone and talk about her journey to Hollywood and her fitness regime, Carano made one more attempt to do damage control.
“I do want people to know that this has not been easy,” she said. “I’m a human being, I have so much to learn and grow, and I am. I am deeply understanding, it’s like the curtains got pulled and I’m seeing so much.”
“Being canceled might become trendy one day, but don’t think that when it happens to you, it’s gonna be easy because it’s not. It’s maybe going to be one of the hardest things that you’ve ever been through. But each day that goes by, you find your legs again, and you stop feeling sorry for yourself and you show up.”
“My body is still shaking,” she added. “It’s devastating, but the thought of this happening to anybody else, especially to somebody who could not handle this the way I can, no, they don’t get to do that. They don’t get to make people feel like that.”
Again, following her firing, Carano was immediately hired by Shapiro’s The Daily Wire, whose first production has a very messy backstory.
