Pedro Pascal Called to Testify in Gina Carano’s ‘Mandalorian’ Lawsuit Over His Holocaust-Related Posts
Shiryn Ghermezian
Gina Carano as Cara Dune in “The Mandalorian” season two, exclusively on Disney+. Photo: Disney+
In 2021, Disney said Carano wouldn’t return to the show after she made social-media posts comparing conservatives in America to Jews in the Holocaust, questioning the results of the 2020 election and the use of masks amid the coronavirus pandemic, and appearing to mock displaying pronouns to support transgender people.
Carano’s lawsuit, funded by Elon Musk and filed in February, comes just short of calling Disney a hive of scum and villainy — accusing the company of unjustly firing her for her views, which are protected by the First Amendment.
Carano said Pascal spoke with her about transgender rights during the public firestorm about her social-media remarks. Carano has also singled out Pascal as a “similarly situated” actor who hasn’t been punished by Disney for his own social-media posts, which include comparing Donald Trump and his supporters to Nazis, statements supporting LGBTQ+ people, and calls to “defund the police.”
Actress Gina Carano has called on her former co-star from “The Mandalorian,” Pedro Pascal, to be a potential witness and testify in her sex discrimination and wrongful termination lawsuit against the Walt Disney Company and Lucasfilm because of social media posts uploaded by Pascal that are related to the Holocaust.
In February 2021, not long after the second season of The Mandalorian finished airing on Disney+, Carano shared on social media a TikTok post that compared political divides in America to Nazi Germany. Shortly afterward, Lucasfilm, which co-produces “The Mandalorian,” fired the actress and ex-mixed martial arts fighter from the popular Disney+ series because of her social media post. Carano played a bounty hunter Cara Dune in the first two seasons of the show, whose title character is portrayed by Pascal.
Carano filed a lawsuit in February 2024, claiming that she was wrongfully fired and that her words were “consistently twisted to demonize and dehumanize me as an alt right-wing extremist.”
In a July 26 joint filing from Carano and Disney, she named Pascal, “Mandalorian” creator and showrunner Jon Favreau, and former Disney chief executive Bob Chapek as potential witnesses that could be called to testify in her case, according to the court document obtained The Hollywood Reporter. She also named other potential witnesses, including Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy and Lynne Hale, the longtime Lucasfilm head of public relations and communications.
In the joint filling, Carano argued that Disney and Lucasfilm fired her for “expressing her personal political opinions” on social media while “male actors,” like Pascal, “were allowed to make political comments on social media without any adverse action.” She claims she was “treated differently than her similarly situated male co-workers.”
Carano drew attention to a post by Pascal in 2017 that compared former US President Donald Trump to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. He also compared Trump supporters to Nazis. Carano additionally cited in her lawsuit a 2018 picture Pascal posted on X/Twitter that showed children in a cage in what he claimed to be America, and he compared it to the detention of Jewish children in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. He wrote in the caption, “#ThisisAmerica.”
Carano was fired from “The Mandalorian” for sharing a social media post that said: “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?”
Lucasfilm said her post “denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.” A month later, Disney’s CEO at the time explained that Carano was fired because her views “didn’t align with company values,” including its “values of respect, values of decency, values of integrity, and values of inclusion.”
Carano’s trial against Disney and Lucasfilm is tentatively scheduled for Sept. 25, 2025. Last week, a federal judge rejected Disney’s efforts to dismiss the lawsuit. Disney has argued that it has “a constitutional right not to associate its artistic expression with Carano’s speech” and that the First Amendment “protects Disney’s right to protect its own speech from association with Carano’s high-profile, controversial speech.”
After the federal judge’s decision last week, Carano said in a post on X: “I am moved to tears. After a brutal 3 1/2 years, I am being given the opportunity to move forward in the court of law before the judge and my peers to clear my name. I am so grateful for this opportunity.”
“What happened to me was unacceptable, absurd and abusive, among other things,” she added. “It should not have happened to me, and it should not happen to anyone else moving forward. Let it stop here … I pray for justice to shine through this case. It’s been one heck of a life. I am looking forward to getting back to the art of storytelling and doing my part to help the world heal.”
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