By Wonderwall.com Editors
2:00pm PST, Feb 8, 2024
_
Gina Carano, who was fired from "The Mandalorian" in 2021, has filed a lawsuit suit against The Walt Disney Co. and Lucasfilm, claiming she was wrongfully terminated over social media comments she made about the Holocaust, transgender people and the use of masks and vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Elon Musk and X, formerly known as Twitter, are helping to fund the legal action, Carano and Musk confirmed on X.
Carano filed suit against the studios in federal court in California on Tuesday, Feb. 6, according to NBC News. She's reportedly asking for a court order that would force Lucasfilm to re-hire her or pay at least $75,000 in damages stemming from emotional pain and lost income.
Posting later that day on X, Carano said she'd reached out to Musk about her "The Mandalorian" firing after spotting his offer to support legal fights for X users who'd lost their jobs for "exercising your right to free speech" on the platform. (Although Carano had shared her controversial comments on Instagram, Musk apparently opted to help with her case.)
"To my surprise, a few months ago I received an email from a lawyer who had been hired by X to look into my story and many others," she wrote.
Keep reading for more details…
MORE: Follow Wonderwall on MSN for more celebrity & entertainment photo galleries and content
_
"After my 20 years of building a career from scratch, and during the regime of former Disney CEO Bob Chapek, Lucasfilm made this statement on Twitter, terminating me from 'The Mandalorian,'" Gina Carano wrote on X on Feb. 6.
"'Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable,'" she continued, quoting Lucasfilm's response to the Instagram posts that led to her firing.
"Nothing could be further from the truth," Carano wrote. "The truth is I was being hunted down from everything I posted to every post I liked because I was not in line with the acceptable narrative of the time."
While a number of her comments on social media were scrutinized and slammed as baseless conspiracy theories, Carano was axed from "The Mandalorian" amid uproar over a 2021 Instagram Story she shared that was widely seen as antisemitic.
The post referred to the Holocaust and tactics used against Jews, asking "How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?"
In other posts from 2020, the actress poked fun at people who wore masks during the pandemic and suggested the 2020 presidential election had been marred by "voter fraud." She also shared posts and comments that were widely taken to be jabs at transgender people and those who use non-binary pronouns.
MORE: Alyssa Milano addresses backlash over fundraising for son's baseball team
_
"My words were consistently twisted to demonize and dehumanize me as an alt right wing extremist," Gina Carano claimed on X this week. "It was a bullying smear campaign aimed at silencing, destroying and making an example out of me."
In her lawsuit, Carano claims she was unfairly fired for her social media comments while her male co-stars, Carl Weathers and Pedro Pascal, "took equally or more vigorous and controversial positions on social media," without recrimination, according to NBC.
"The thing is I never even used aggressive language," Carano wrote on X. "I shared thought provoking quotes, pictures, memes and occasionally I used my own words, not with aggression but with respect and the occasional comedy to keep the mood light in dark times."
Elsewhere in the long post, the actress thanked Musk for providing the lawyers now pursuing her case against Disney and Lucasfilm.
MORE: Carl Weathers dies at 76: Sylvester Stallone, more stars react
_
"I would like to express my deepest gratitude and thank you to @ElonMusk and @X for giving me an opportunity to bring my case to light," Gina Carano wrote on X this week.
In a statement about the lawsuit published by Salon.com, Joe Benarroch, head of business operations for X, said, "As a sign of X Corp.'s commitment to free speech, we're proud to provide financial support for Gina Carano's lawsuit, empowering her to seek vindication of her free speech rights on X and the ability to work without bullying, harassment, or discrimination."
Musk, meanwhile, shared Gina Carano's post on Feb. 6, along with an invitation to others who may wish to get involved.
"Please let us know if you would like to join the lawsuit against Disney," he captioned the repost on X.
"If you were discriminated against by Disney or its subsidiaries (ABC, ESPN, Marvel, etc), just reply to this post to receive legal support," he added in a separate post.
Musk also posted a document that appears to detail Disney's entertainment inclusion standards.
_
"An anonymous source just sent me this from Disney. It is mandatory, institutionalized racism and sexism!" Elon Musk claimed on X while captioning a document that appears to detail Disney's entertainment inclusion standards.
But he didn't stop there.
On Feb. 7, the SpaceX CEO wrote "Disney sucks" on X while sharing an apparently misquoted report claiming Disney was considering casting Ayo Edebiri, a Black woman, in the role of Jack Sparrow, long played by Johnny Depp, a white man.
However, the story to which Musk linked incorrectly quotes writer and movie "insider" Daniel Richtman as having reported Disney might replace Depp with Edebiri. (Over on Richtman's own X account, he shared another version of the same claim, writing, "No. That's not what I said lmao." Richtman also clarified, "Margot Robbie herself will star in her spinoff movie.")
As of Feb. 7, neither Disney nor Lucasfilm had commented on the lawsuit publicly.
