UPDATED 2/10, 11:25 p.m. ET: Gina Carano has been dropped from The Mandalorian.
“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” a spokesperson for the production company told Deadline. “Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
Carano played bounty hunter Cara Dune in the first two seasons of The Mandalorian. Fans had assumed she would reprise her role in season 3, while some theorized she would star in the upcoming spinoff series, Star Wars: Rangers of the New Republic.
Sources told The Hollywood Reporter’s Aaron Couch that the production company intended to announce Carano as the star of her own series during last year’s Disney Investor Day; however, those plans were squashed in wake of the Carano’s controversial social media activity.
“They have been looking for a reason to fire her for two months, and today was the final straw,” the insider told Couch, suggesting the decision was made Wednesday.
On top of all that, Carano and her agency UTA have parted ways, Deadline reports.
Carano has yet to directly address the controversy or Lucasfilm’s announcement.
See original story below.
The Mandalorian star Gina Carano is facing backlash over a politically charged social media post.
The 38-year-old actress, who plays Cara Dune on the Disney+ Star Wars series, shared an Instagram story Tuesday night that seemingly compared today’s Republicans to Jews living in Nazi Germany. Carano, who is known for sharing her conservative views on social media, has since removed the post; however, screenshots of the message continue to circulate on social media and have caused the #FireGinaCarano hashtag to trend on Twitter.
The post in question reads: “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.”
Carano has not directly responded to the backlash, but shared a series of fight scenes from the 2007 film 300. She has also posted a story that read, “Expecting everyone you encounter to agree with every belief or view you hold is fucking wild” as well as another that claimed, “Jeff Epstein didn’t kill himself.”
The former MMA fighter is no stranger to online controversy. She has shared memes that mock mask mandates, and has posted comments about so-called election fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
Carano was also accused of being transphobic after she wrote “beep/bop/boop” in her Twitter bio. Many believed the actress was making fun of trans people who put their preferred pronouns in their bios. She removed “beep/bop/boop” shortly after the backlash, and claimed it was her Mandalorian co-star Pedro Pascal who educated her on the importance of pronouns.
“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 wrote back in September. “I stand against bullying, especially the most vulnerable & freedom to choose.”
Disney has yet to release a statement on the matter. You can read reactions to Carano’s post below.
