Last week Disney announced that Gina Carano would no longer be appearing in The Mandalorian or any other Star Wars projects, the Mouse House taking action to fire the actress from her role as Cara Dune after social media posts from Carano which the studio described as “abhorrent and unacceptable”.
The news wasn’t entirely unexpected, as the former MMA star had already run afoul of Disney due to previous social media posts mocking non-binary pronouns, which had led many fans to call for her dismissal. Now, in a statement to former NY Times writer Bari Weiss, Carano has discussed her firing and revealed that she only found out she’d been axed when she saw the news on social media.
“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,” said Carano, who revealed that Disney and Lucasfilm decided to exclude her from press and promotion for the second season of the Disney+ series.
“That was heart-breaking, but I didn’t want to take away from the hard work of everyone who worked on the project, so I said ok,” she continued. “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.”
Since Carano’s dismissal, conflicting reports have been circulating as to whether Disney intends on recasting the role of Cara Dune for The Mandalorian season three, as well as the upcoming Star Wars: Rangers of the New Republic series, which was announced during Disney’s Investor Day in December.
Rangers of the New Republic would have featured Carano prominently, and Disney was initially planning to include the actress in its Investor Day presentation. That never happened of course, and with Hasbro releasing a statement confirming that “there are no plans to create more” Cara Dune products, the consensus seems to be that the character will simply be dropped rather than recast.
The Mandalorian seasons one and two are available to stream now on Disney+ and feature a cast that includes Pedro Pascal, Gina Carano, Carl Weathers, Giancarlo Esposito, Nick Nolte, Bill Burr, Ming-Na Wen, Taika Waititi, Werner Herzog, Omid Abtahi, Amy Sedaris, Temuera Morrison, Rosario Dawson, Katee Sackhoff, Timothy Olyphant, Michael Biehn, Sasha Banks and Mark Hamill.
