Anyone holding out hope that Gina Carano vs. The Internet would draw to a close once the actress was fired from The Mandalorian is going to be sorely disappointed, with recent developments making it look increasingly likely that the two sides are going to be slinging mud back and forth for a long time yet.
As soon as the news broke that the former MMA fighter had been booted from the smash hit Disney Plus series, a string of petitions immediately sprung up on both sides of the divide. Some of them are demanding that Disney rehire her or fire Pedro Pascal to avoid making the double standards abundantly clear, while others want Don Cheadle to be the new Cara Dune.
Of course, Carano dug her own grave by continuing to share inflammatory social media posts knowing exactly how they would go down, especially when certain sections of the fanbase had been calling for her dismissal for months. And in a new interview, the former Cara Dune revealed that Disney and Lucasfilm had already tried to force her into releasing a pre-approved statement apologizing for the transphobic backlash that greeted her last year, but she had no intention of using anybody else’s words.
“Earlier on last year before The Mandalorian came out, they wanted me to use their exact wording for an apology over pronoun usage. I declined and offered a statement in my own words. I made clear I wanted nothing to do with mocking the transgender community, and was just drawing attention to the abuse of the mob in forcing people to put pronouns in their bio. That was the last time I was contacted about any type of public statement or apology from Lucasfilm. I found out through social media, like everyone else, that I had been fired.”
The use of the term ‘mob’ is only going to fan the flames, as equal measures of support and sympathy continue to greet the studio’s decision to fire her. Gina Carano might no longer be part of The Mandalorian, losing out on a lucrative role in the process, but based on her online antics, it’s not as if she’s a shrinking violet destined to fade into the shadows simply because she was terminated from the most high profile gig of her career.