Why Elon Musk and a Star Wars actor are going to war with Disney

A legal dispute of cosmic proportions has broken out between an intergalactic money-making enterprise and a woman with unorthodox views and a deep-speaking voice who has spent the past few years keeping a low profile. That’s the plot of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, in which the grasping Trade Federation tries to put manners on Naboo’s Padmé Amidala.

But it is also, in a sense, the storyline of the ongoing row between Disney and former Star Wars actress Gina Carano. The ex-MMA star has just fired up her blasters and is suing Disney’s Lucasfilm division for discrimination and wrongful termination. There is also a cameo by the social media equivalent of Darth Vader, with Carano’s case against Disney funded by Twitter/X Sith Lord Elon Musk.

Lucasfilm sacked Carano from its Mandalorian Disney+ series and future Star Wars projects over a number of controversial social media posts. On February 10 2021, she shared a tweet that evoked Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jews in the context of the shunning of right-wing Republicans in the United States.

“Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbours,” the post began. “How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”

That came on the heels of earlier Instagram messages in which Carano appeared to mock the use of gender pronouns by “identifying” herself as “beep/bop/boop”. She had also ranted against facemasks, tweeting “Democratic government leaders now recommends [sic] we all wear blindfolds along with masks so we can’t see what’s really going on.”

Cast into deep space by Disney, Carano is now striking back. In her lawsuit, she alleges Disney and Lucasfilm “harassed and defamed” her for “refusing to conform with their viewpoints on issues relating to Black Lives Matter, preferred pronouns, and disproven claims of election interference”.

She says Disney, which paid her $25,000 per episode of The Mandalorian, pressured her to meet with a representative of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination and publicly apologise for her tweets. She declined. Next, she was asked to meet Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and 45 LGBTQ+ Disney employees. Having again refused to do so, Carano says she was fired. (Disney is yet to comment on the lawsuit, but at the time called her social media posts “abhorrent and unacceptable”.)

She further claims that Disney later removed an episode of Running Wild With Bear Grylls from its streaming service in which she appeared in an “effort to malign her” (the instalment aired at a later date). According to the suit: “Defendants went so far as to try and convince Carano’s publicist to force Carano to issue a statement admitting to mocking or insulting an entire group of people, which Carano had never done.”

Carano says she was singled out because of her gender. She points to tweets by Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal in which he compared Donald Trump supporters to Nazis as an example of Disney’s double standards. Why was it acceptable for Pascal to evoke Hitler – when she was punished for retweeting a post about Nazis?

“Some of us have been unjustly singled out, harassed, persecuted and had our livelihoods stripped away because we dared to encourage conversation, asked questions, and refused to go along with the mob,” she said in a statement.

The most significant talking point around the lawsuit is perhaps the involvement of Musk. He is one of the few people on this or any other planet with the financial muscle to go up against Disney. Musk has vowed to bankroll legal actions against users on X who believe their employers have discriminated against them.

“As a sign of X Corp’s commitment to free speech, we’re proud to provide financial support for Gina Carano’s lawsuit, empowering her to seek vindication of her free speech rights on X and the ability to work without bullying, harassment, or discrimination,” a spokesman for the billionaire confirmed.

Since her sacking by Disney, Carano has tried to reinvent herself as a star of the tiny Right-wing movie industry – with middling results. She was hired by the Daily Wire, a fringe streamer founded by activist Ben Shapiro. Her first project was 2022 western Terror on the Prairie. Reviews were mixed. “The artist formerly known as Cara Dune is a very limited, often unintelligible, actress,” said Starburst.

That was followed by an appearance opposite Laurence Fox in My Son Hunter. Fox plays the troubled offspring of Joe Biden, Carano a secret service operative named Agent Hound. The film, distributed by Breitbart News, is deeply surreal – landing somewhere between Twin Peaks and Fox News. Or, as the New Yorker put it, “An amateurish, often bat___, if very occasionally vulgarly amusing satire-cum-thriller-cum-melodrama-cum-propaganda-organ, which switches between modes with the head-spinning unexpectedness of a Surrealist cutup”.

Carano’s lawsuit could go either way. However, should she – and Musk – succeed, the impact on Hollywood would be significant. She isn’t the only Right-leaning star who claims to have been cast into the void for their views. For instance, actor Antonio Sabato, Jr – a Calvin Klein model turned star of soap opera General Hospital – has claimed he’s been frozen out of the industry for publicly embracing Donald Trump.

“I had to sell everything … I had to pay all my debts. I was blacklisted,” he told Variety. “All my representatives left me, from agents to managers to commercial agents. I literally had to move, find a new job to survive and take care of my kids. It’s been terrible. It’s mind-blowing. It’s a disgrace. It’s tough, because if you’re in that environment in Hollywood and you have something to say that they don’t like, they’re going to let you know.”

Sabato Jr would have a tough time suing anyone. But what about Milos Bikovic, who says he was fired from series three of White Lotus as part of a “targeted campaign” after Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Ministry shared images of the Serbian actor shaking hands with Vladimir Putin?

Such cases might well draw the attention of Elon Musk, who appears to revel in his role as an international agent of chaos. Many regard Musk as having long ago crossed over to the dark side – he undoubtedly has a different opinion. Whoever the case, the fall-out from the Carano legal action could be explosive – a Death Star with the potential to rip through Disney and all of Hollywood.

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