Disney Tried To Force Gina Carano To Issue An Apology They Wrote
In a new interview, The Mandalorian's Gina Carano said that Disney tried to get her to post an apology using their wording.
This article is more than 2 years old
Last week, Gina Carano was fired from The Mandalorian after sharing a post on Instagram which compared being Republican today to being Jewish during the Holocaust. Lucasfilm said that Carano will no longer be playing the character of Cara Dune in The Mandalorian or in any other Lucasfilm projects. But Carano’s latest controversial post was just one of many that led to the actress being let go, and in a recent interview, Carano said that after one of these posts, Disney asked her to release a statement using their wording to apologize.
In September of last year, Gina Carano put “boop/bop/beep” in her Twitter name, which seemed like the actress mocking users who decided to include their gender pronouns in their profile. With this incident happening before the second season of The Mandalorian, in which Carano’s Cara Dune would return, Disney asked the actress to apologize.
In an interview with ex-The New York Times op-ed staff editor Bari Weiss on her Substack, Carano stated, “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.” Gina Carano continued, “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.”
Apparently, Disney was fine with this, since they didn’t force Gina Carano to sign any apology they wrote, and instead allowed Carano to make her own statement. But Carano should have probably taken Disney up on their prepared statement, considering her own statement wasn’t met with widespread acceptance. Carano’s “apology” on Twitter said:
Gina Carano would also in a later defensive tweet say “They’re mad cuz I won’t put pronouns in my bio to show support for trans lives. After months of harassing me in every way. I decided to put 3 VERY controversial words in my bio.. beep/bop/boop.” No word on what “harassing” Carano had to put up with, other than possibly being asked to put gender pronouns in her Twitter bio.
But having a major company or representation for a public figure write an apology for that person isn’t exactly that ridiculous. Many celebrities who try to write their own apologies often end up in more hot water than when they started. Just look at Vanessa Hudgens’ weak apology after saying it was inevitable that people would die during the pandemic, or Ellen DeGeneres’ own apology for her treatment of staffers that only made people question what elements of the toxic work environment the public doesn’t know about yet.
Considering Gina Carano was reportedly blocking anyone who said “Black Lives Matter” or “BLM” without responding to those allegations, Disney had a right to question the efficiency of a future apology. Since the “beep/bop/boop” incident, Carano has also questioned mask usage on her Twitter account, posted other images that have been read as anti-Semitic, as well as said the presidential election was rigged. Carano’s latest post wasn’t just the last straw for Lucasfilm, it was a continuation of negative behavior, some of which – like refuting the science behind wearing a mask – could actually get her follows killed.
It should also be noted that Gina Carano made this statement in an interview with Bari Weiss, who also believes herself to be a victim of “cancel culture.” Weiss resigned from The New York Times last year, a month after James Bennet, the Times’ editorial page editor, also resigned after posting an op-ed written by Senator Tom Cotton. The Republican from Kansas wrote an article saying that armed forces should be brought in to silence the Black Lives Matter protests after the death of George Floyd.
After Bennet quit, Bari Weiss tweeted that there was a “civil war” happening in The New York Times “between the (mostly young) wokes [and] the (mostly 40+) liberals.” Weiss said that this war was stifling the open exchange of ideas, despite the fact that the article in question was actually posted and despite the violence it incited towards unarmed protestors. Apparently, getting posted in The New York Times somehow is being silenced by liberals? But both Bennet and Weiss quit of their own accord, and also after many questionable posts on The New York Times op-ed page. Both received criticism for their pieces, but it seems as though those criticisms weren’t welcomed by Weiss in the “open exchange of ideas.”
At the end of Weiss’ article in which she interviews Gina Carano, she states, “The bottom line here is that intent matters.” That is absolutely true, and for many, Carano posting “beep/bop/boop” in her profile was an active and intentional way for the actress to mock people who wanted to share their gender pronouns. It also seems the “intent” for Carano in posting the image that ultimately got her fired was to say that she was being persecuted as much as people who were held in ghettos, tortured, and murdered by Nazis.
After a history of problematic behavior, Disney asked Gina Carano to apologize for posts that also reflected poorly on Disney and Lucasfilm. When Carano said no and posted her own apology, the reaction wasn’t great – like it seems Disney assumed it wouldn’t be. Not only did Disney try to help Carano from being fired, there are rumors that Pedro Pascal also attempted to help her out. Carano ended up having to answer for the consequences of her troublesome behavior, despite Disney and Pascal’s interjections.
