Gina Carano Sues Disney and Lucasfilm Over Wrongful Termination, Lawsuit Funded by Elon Musk
Three years after her firing from The Mandalorian and other Star Wars spin-offs, Gina Carano is back knocking on Lucasfilm and Disney’s door — but this time, she’s lawyered up. Carano filed a lawsuit for discrimination and wrongful termination against her former employers on Tuesday. She seeks to be recast, $75,000, and punitive damages.
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In the complaint, which you can read here, Carano and her legal representatives argue that she was “terminated from her role as swiftly as her character’s peaceful home planet of Alderaan had been destroyed by the Death Star in an earlier Star Wars film. And all this because she dared voice her own opinions, on social media platforms and elsewhere, and stood up to the online bully mob who demanded her compliance with their extreme progressive ideology.”
They go on to say that this discrimination was done on the basis of sex, alleging her male co-stars have made similarly inflammatory social media posts that were ignored by Disney and Lucasfilm. The Hollywood Reporter speculates that this is in relation to Pedro Pascal’s 2017 post comparing then-President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. The complaint added:
While the incivility directed towards her started much earlier, over the summer of 2020 Carano was constantly harassed and bullied on social media to support various causes, adopt various ideologies, and hold herself out in certain ways in her social media profiles.
When she declined, Carano was called all sorts of names, including that she was a racist for not publicly adopting the Black Lives Matter moniker and a “transphobic bitch” for not including pronouns in her profile’s biography section.
Social media users demanded that Carano publicly support the Black Lives Matter movement, including adopting their slogans.
They went on to add pages and pages of screen captures of users’ posts on Twitter/X asking her to take public action in support of BLM and other matters including lockdowns and mask mandates enforced in light of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. After months of online exchanges, Carano’s legal reps add that Disney and Lucasfilm “subjected Carano to long phone calls demanding an explanation and criticizing her for not embracing what some see as mandatory solidarity with a vocal element of the transgender activist community. Even when she expressed that [Lucasfilm and Disney’s] demands were excessive and asked for some time away from the constant meetings, [the companies] refused, demanding that she continue with her ‘re-education’ program.”
The gaps may be filled by the legal document linked above. It claims that Carano’s firing was announced via a statement to the press before the MMA fighter-turned-actress was even informed. At that point, the lawsuit says, Jon Favreau had told Gina Carano that “her life was about to change”. Lucasfilm was going to develop Rangers of the New Republic which she would have been one of the leads of. (According to them, that would have meant financial compensations of $150k-$250k per episode, vs. the $25k she was making on The Mandalorian up until then.) No contract had been signed. Moreover, Carano says that Favreau had told her she was going to be a part of a new series of Star Wars movies based on the various Disney Plus series — that series, they claim, included the recently announced The Mandalorian & Grogu.
Carano’s team seeks:
- Disney and Lucasfilm reinstate her to her prior position, with no loss of pay or benefits.
- A judgment declaring her termination was unlawful.
- Compensatory damages of at least $75,000.
- Compensatory damages for the loss of future employment in an amount to be determined at trial (TBD).
- Emotional distress damages (TBD).
- Punitive damages (TBD).
- Attorneys’ fees cost and further relief deemed just by the Court
- A trial by jury
Elon Musk promised last year to finance, sparing no expenses, any wrongful termination suit against corporations to those who had been fired for expressing their views on social media. Fulfilling that promise, Musk will be footing Carano’s legal bill, per The Hollywood Reporter.
This is an evolving legal matter that will likely be resolved behind closed doors, given Disney’s past fights with actresses like Scarlett Johansson (over very different issues). However, Carano is asking for a jury trial. The actress also posted an emotional message on Instagram about Carl Weathers following his passing on Thursday.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
