Gina Carano’s Mandalorian Co-Star Is Finally Speaking Out
Gina Carano's The Mandalorian co-star is speaking out on her firing.
This article is more than 2 years old
Gina Carano’s former The Mandalorian co-stars haven’t had a lot to say about her firing from the series in February. Now at least one actress who worked with Carano on the Star Wars series is speaking out about her character and the situation that led to her dismissal.
You wouldn’t necessarily recognize Emily Swallow from her role on the series, because she plays the enigmatic Armorer who has only ever appeared on The Mandalorian with her helmet covering her face. At a panel at Atlanta’s Dragon Con, Swallow called Gina Carano (via The Direct) “a lovely person.” She described her co-star in ways that might surprise those who campaigned for her firing, characterizing her as being “welcoming” of others’ points of view as well as “very giving” and “very gracious.”
While Swallow didn’t go so far as to say Gina Carano shouldn’t have been fired, she called herself “baffled” by so-called “cancel culture” and characterized what happened to Carano as a failure to respect free speech.
The beginning of the end of Gina Carano’s time on The Mandalorian came last November after she posted a pair of controversial tweets within a couple of weeks of each other. First, she tweeted about voter fraud, adding her voice to those harboring conspiracy theories about President Joe Biden’s election win. A little over a week later, Carano shared a meme mocking mask-wearing to prevent the spread of COVID-19. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney was ready to give Carano her own spin-off series before those tweets. THR claims that after the posts, Lucasfilm was “just waiting” for an excuse to cut her loose from the franchise altogether.
Gina Carano offered the excuse on a silver platter in February. In an Instagram post that was deleted (via AP News), Carano compared those attacking her for her political and social views to Nazis. That was the last straw for Lucasfilm, who quickly announced Carano was no longer employed by them and that they had no intention of letting her anywhere near Star Wars in the foreseeable future.
In spite of what seemed like Lucasfilm’s final word on the matter, Gina Carano’s fans haven’t given up hope on her return to Star Wars, and Carano’s own social media posts wouldn’t make it easy for them if they tried. In June, Carano tweeted a picture many thought might be a hint that she was on her way back to the world George Lucas made. Without a caption or any other explanation, the picture shows a shadowy figure standing below a sky shining with three suns — something Tattooine of Star Wars is known for.
We may never know why she sent out that tweet, but in the meantime we have some more definitive news about Gina Carano’s career. Not long after her firing, Carano landed a new movie deal, per Deadline, with conservative pundit Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire. A month ago, we learned that new movie will be the revenge thriller White Knuckle. Carano will star as a woman who hunts down the serial killer who traumatized her. The film will be based on a 2015 novel of the same name by Eric Red. Red is perhaps best known for writing the 1986 cult thriller The Hitcher starring the late Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
