Actress Gina Carano Tuesday sued The Walt Disney Co. and Lucasfilm Ltd. for discrimination and wrongful termination, alleging in federal court that she was fired from the TV series "The Mandalorian" for voicing right-wing opinions on social media.
Carano is seeking a court order that would force Lucasfilm to recast her in the series. Elon Musk, who promised to pay the legal fees for users who contend they were the subject of discrimination due to their activity on his X (formerly Twitter) platform, is helping fund the suit, Carano said in a post on X.
"I would like to express my deepest gratitude & thank you to @ElonMusk & @X for giving me an opportunity to bring my case to light," Carano wrote.
According to the complaint, Lucasfilm announced in 2021 that Carano, after two seasons on the show, would not be returning to the hit series after sharing a post that compared being a Republican to being a Jew during the Holocaust, a post she ultimately removed.
The suit, filed in Los Angeles federal court, contends Carano was fired "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."
She further alleges that the defendants' "wrath over their employees' social media posts also differed depending on sex," according to the suit, which maintains that Disney and Lucasfilm "chose to target a woman while looking the other way when it came to men."
Attorneys for Carano wrote in the lawsuit that she "expressed her personal political views, opinions and beliefs" while she was "off-duty and away from the workplace."
As a result of her posts, her former employers "terminated Carano's employment and took other retaliatory actions to limit and deny her future employment opportunities, including but not limited to making maliciously false statements about Carano with the intention of damaging her reputation and, thus, her ability to find and retain work."
Carano, 41, a former mixed martial artist, portrayed the character Cara Dune in the first two seasons of the Disney+ space Western series from 2019 to 2020. Previously, she had roles in the first "Deadpool" movie, "Fast & Furious 6" and Steven Soderbergh's "Haywire."
The suit alleges wrongful discharge and sex discrimination, and seeks a court order that would force Lucasfilm to recast her, and pay at least $75,000, along with punitive damages.
"Artists do not sign away our rights as American citizens when we enter into employment," Carano wrote in her X post Tuesday.
Representatives for Disney and Lucasfilm could not immediately be reached for comment.
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