Gina Carano knows something about “cancel culture” and how dangerous it can be, especially for anyone in Hollywood who strays from the mainstream narrative.
The former MMA fighter was cut from Disney’s “The Mandalorian” in February 2021 allegedly over social media posts that some deemed offensive.
Soon afterward, Carano partnered with The Daily Wire to produce and develop her own film, which debuted June 14. “Terror on the Prairie” is a Western starring Carano as a frontier woman fighting for survival against a ruthless gang of outlaws, which is kind of perfect considering what she’s been through.
Carano previously said the film “felt like closure” to the public humiliation of being canceled. The story of Hattie McAllister also had similarities to Carano’s plight.
“When I was canceled, I felt like everything was turned against me,” Carano told Fox News. “Everything that I loved was just against me. I was fighting for my name. I just felt like everything was stripped from me.”
“But Hattie, she’s out there with her family,” she continued. “She’s trying to be a supportive wife, but she’s removed from her home and it’s hard. Everything has been stripped from her. The elements have turned against her. She and her husband aren’t in the best place. They’re arguing back and forth and the baby’s crying.
She said she harnessed the pain of her real life to bring to the character.
“I just felt it was a really good time for me to access the pain that I was feeling in my personal life and wear it quietly,” Carano explained. “Because that’s how I felt inside. It was nice that the character had that in it, and I could kind of use that as therapy, just to let my hurt show in a way that I was doing in life anyway. I think it really added to my character.”
The conservative-leaning actress also noted how cancel culture seems to be very one-sided, which can be “dangerous.”
“I think it starts putting us on the line of kind of like a social credit score. And … corporations are going to win that battle. They’re going to win the social credit score. They’re going to win the popularity battle because they have access to manipulating even the data, but they have access to manipulating the masses, whereas that robs from the individual,” Carano told the publication.
“…[W]hen a company’s preaching about being inclusive to all people, and they’re not, they’re just telling one side of the story, and they’re just telling … they’re alienating half of, if not more, the country, I think that we’ve run into a big problem,” she continued.
Now that Carano has made her way back to the big screen, she’s hoping other actors will see and be brave enough to stand their ground against cancel culture as well. She’s also hoping for unity and healing.
“I hope that we can all be encouraging to each other and lift each other up because this country is truly, and the world is truly going to be in a lot of pain … There’s got to be a different way to show people what true light is. We’ve got to show people a different way,” Carano told Fox News.
“We’re going to need to put some differences aside and agree to disagree [to] get our country and the morale back. We need to do that as people,” she concluded. “I think art and movies can be a great thing if we… bond together a little bit more.”
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