'Sopranos' star Drea de Matteo slams cancel culture
Drea de Matteo says cancel culture is "volatile and vile."
Gina Carano, the former star of the Disney+ series "The Mandalorian," opened up about her public firing, the behind the scenes drama and the legal battle she is waging against Disney in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Carano, who has right-libertarian-leaning views, although she resists labeling her politics, faced public backlash that ultimately resulted in her firing by Disney, because of tweets and Instagram posts on highly sensitive and divisive topics like COVID-19 vaccines, masking, Black Lives Matter, the transgender rights movement and the results of the 2020 presidential election.
In the interview, she described the "unforgivable sin in Hollywood" as "a person who wouldn’t perfectly conform at a time when emotions were running wild in the world."
Gina Carano attends the Premiere of Disney's "Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker" on December 16, 2019 in Hollywood, California.
Now, Carano is suing The Walt Disney Company for "millions in lost income" over alleged wrongful termination and "discriminatory treatment" due to her political views.
X Corp, which is owned by tech mogul Elon Musk, said it funded the suit as part of its "commitment to free speech" after the billionaire pledged to fund her legal bills if she was "unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform [X]."
"I think it’s pretty incredible what he is doing," Carano told The Hollywood Reporter. "A lot of billionaires put their money into buying islands and building bunkers. Elon Musk is using his money to fight massive injustice battles."
Her legal team argued, "Disney bullied Ms. Carano, trying to force her to conform to their views about cultural and political issues – when that bullying failed, they fired her."
Now, she is dishing out details about what happened behind the scenes amid public controversy, primarily prompted by her social media commentary that Disney considered problematic and offensive.
Gina Carano attends the premiere of Disney+'s "The Mandalorian" at El Capitan Theatre on November 13, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. ((Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/FilmMagic))
Carano faced online backlash as a result of her controversial comments regarding pronouns in September 2020 when she put "boop/bop/beep" in her Twitter bio after fans asked her to show support for the transgender community. The actress said she wasn't trying to insult the transgender community, noting: "I thought it was cute, like R2-D2."
The Lucasfilm and Disney HR department disagreed, subjecting Carano to what she called a "reeducation camp," that included a Zoom meeting with two transgender representatives from GLAAD. She was also told she had to attend a Zoom meeting along with 45 members of Disney and Lucasfilm’s LGBTQ affinity group, which she said she declined.
"I said, ‘Can I take five or six of these trans leaders to dinner? I’ll pay for it,’ " Carano told The Hollywood Reporter. "They denied that. They were very upset. They said the meeting would be a ‘litmus test.’ I’m not even sure what that means."
"Seriously? This was the start of the end for me? A 20-year career, the blood, sweat and tears of fighting? I never compromised myself for a job," Carano said. "I never ended in a bad situation where I did anything inappropriate. I had a clean and clear climb to where I got to and was going to just keep going. And boop/bop/beep was that harmful?"
Fox News Digital reached out to Disney for comment, but did not hear back.
Carano told The Hollywood Reporter that while she was facing controversy, Pascal, who has a trans sister, told her to "Just put #transrights in your feed. Do it and they’ll leave you alone.'"
She said she didn’t take his advice, "Because that’s not my style, to put hashtag anything. I’m also not going to put #TrumpsRights."
"He [Pedro] knows 1,000 percent I’m not homophobic or transphobic," she said. "He texted me after Carl Weathers [another star of The Mandalorian] passed away. We had our conversation, and it was beautiful."
BILL BURR SAYS GINA CARANO'S ‘MANDALORIAN’ FIRING WAS UNFAIR: ‘LIBERALS PROVED HER POINT’
Gina Carano and Pedro Pascal
"One thing he did say was, 'Thank you. You and Carl Weathers have always been protectors.’ And he knows what that means, and I know what that means, and I wish I could tell why," she added. "We basically left it at ‘I can’t wait to give you a big hug.’ "
In February 2021, Carano faced public backlash for an Instagram post she shared that likened the experience of Jewish people during the Holocaust to the U.S. political divide.
"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," read the post, which was originally created by another account.
Her post prompted a Twitter hashtag campaign, #FireGinaCarano, but she says the news of her termination was not relayed directly to her, only learning she was no longer employed by the company after they issued a public statement. She was also dropped by her agency, UTA, and her Hollywood law firm, Ziffren Brittenham.
At the time of her firing, Lucasfilm and the "Star Wars" franchise, which are both operated under parent company Disney, said Carano's social media posts "denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable."
But, Carano told The Hollywood Reporter that the meme "just made sense — don’t hate your neighbor."
"Before the Nazis were as powerful as they became, you had to make it OK to hate this person next to you," she added. "That’s how we get to dangerous places. And history does repeat itself."
"It became very popular to hate me and pick on me," Carano said. "The Hollywood press and major news outlets coupled me into this extreme right-wing thing that I am not."
Now, Carano is speaking out over the cancelation.
"You become unhirable," Carano told The Hollywood Reporter. "And then it becomes OK for other people to disrespect you. And then you’re just carrying around this disrespect, and you’re shouldering all this shame, and it affects your physicality, your mentality. You’re just kind of hopeless. So to be able to fight back — it makes me feel like, ‘OK. That feels good.’ "
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"If the unforgivable sin in Hollywood is being a person who wouldn’t perfectly conform at a time when emotions were running wild in the world, then that’s probably not a Hollywood I’ll ever belong to," she said. "But I think once egos are put aside, Hollywood has the opportunity to grow just like we all do."
According to the Hollywood Reporter, "Disney has until April 9 to respond to the legal petition. So far, the company has issued only a single word regarding the lawsuit — though that word came from the top. When a CNBC journalist asked CEO Bob Iger if he had any comment on the matter, Iger responded, ‘None.’"