Gina Carano’s firing from The Mandalorian had more to do with overall values than the fact that she’s suddenly become a rising star among conservatives.
That’s according to Disney CEO Bob Chapak, who commented on Carano’s firing for the first time on Tuesday during a shareholders meeting.
The former mixed martial artist-turned-actress claimed she found out about her firing on social media after the Twitter hashtag #FireGinaCarano had been trending throughout that same week following several controversial posts on her social media. Carano was also dropped by her talent agents at UTA.
The post that gained the most attention was a photo Carano later deleted that compared the treatment of people with differing political views to the same atrocities suffered by Jews in Nazi Germany.
Chapek was asked point blank if Disney had some sort of conservative blacklist after Carano was fired while her Mandalorian co-star Pedro Pascal was not reprimanded after posting an image on social media that compared immigrant children held in cages at the southern U.S. border to Jews imprisoned in concentration camps.
“I don’t really see Disney as characterizing itself as left-leaning or right-leaning, yet as standing for values — values that are universal,” Chapek said. “Values of respect, values of decency, values of integrity and values of inclusion.
“And we seek to have not only, how we operate but the content that we make reflective of the rich diversity of the world that we live in.”
Carano’s post was denounced as poor taste in the best case scenario with others claiming it was anti-Semitic rhetoric that belittled the suffering of the Jewish people during the Holocaust.
During a lengthy interview with right-wing firebrand Ben Shapiro after her firing, Carano vehemently denied that she was trying to offend Jews or anybody else with her post. She ultimately ended up partnering with Shapiro and his website to produce and star in a new film project as she continued the war of words with her now former employer.
“The thought of this happening to anybody else, especially to somebody who could not handle this the way I can, no, they don’t get to do that,” Carano said during the same interview.
“They don’t get to make people feel like that (….) and if I buckle, it’ll make it okay for these companies, who have a history of lying, to be lying and to do this to other people, and they’ve done it to other people, and I’m not going down without a fight.”
