After actress Gina Carano filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against Disney on Tuesday with support from Tesla and X owner Elon Musk, the tech billionaire has offered legal help to anyone “discriminated against by Disney or its subsidiaries.”
Carano announced on X on Tuesday that her lawsuit, filed in the U.S. federal court for the Central District of California, was prompted in part by an offer from Musk who said in August of last year that X would fund the legal bill of anyone who was “unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform.” The “Terror on the Prairie” actress’ lawsuit was cheered by many people, especially conservatives who have long called out Disney’s leftward drift.
Musk posted on Tuesday evening offering legal support for anyone who has faced discrimination from the media giant. “If you were discriminated against by Disney or its subsidiaries (ABC, ESPN, Marvel, etc), just reply to this post to receive legal support,” he wrote.
The X owner’s post was a follow-up to a previous post in which he pointed to an ABC chart reportedly sent to showrunners, including producers at Disney, that listed its so-called “inclusion standards.” Musk called the standards “institutionalized racism and sexism.”
The inclusion chart, which was reported on by The Hollywood Reporter in September 2020, sought to increase the inclusion of “Underrepresented Groups” in both on-screen and behind-the-scenes roles. The chart pushed the company to meet inclusion quotas, such as requiring that “50% or more of regular and recurring written characters come from Underrepresented Groups” and “50% or more of regular and recurring actors come from Underrepresented Groups.”
An anonymous source just sent me this from Disney. It is mandatory, institutionalized racism and sexism! pic.twitter.com/npMy8YfA1j
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2024
Carano’s lawsuit alleges that she was wrongfully terminated, losing millions of dollars in income, and seeks to force Lucasfilm to recast her. The actress was axed by Disney in 2021 after she posted a screenshot of another social media post that warned of the current political climate resembling Nazi Germany.
Her post read, “Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”
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Disney faced massive backlash for its actions against Carano, while some of the actress’s fellow castmates defended her “gracious” character. Shortly after the high-profile termination, The Daily Wire announced that it had partnered with the former mixed martial artist for a movie deal that resulted in the feature film “Terror on the Prairie,” which premiered in June 2022.
“Today is an important day for me–I am filing a lawsuit against @lucasfilm & @Disney,” Carano wrote in her announcement of the lawsuit against Disney. “After my 20 years of building a career from scratch, and during the regime of former Disney CEO Bob Chapek, Lucasfilm made this statement on Twitter, terminating me from The Mandalorian: ‘Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm & there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural & religious identities are abhorrent & unacceptable.’”
“Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is I was being hunted down from everything I posted to every post I liked because I was not in line with the acceptable narrative of the time,” the actress continued. “My words were consistently twisted to demonize & dehumanize me as an alt right wing extremist. It was a bullying smear campaign aimed at silencing, destroying & making an example out of me.”
Today is an important day for me–I am filing a lawsuit against @lucasfilm & @Disney
After my 20 years of building a career from scratch, and during the regime of former Disney CEO Bob Chapek, Lucasfilm made this statement on Twitter, terminating me from The Mandalorian: “Gina…— Gina Carano 🕯 (@ginacarano) February 6, 2024