Former MMA star Gina Carano has been playing with fire on social media for quite some time and it’s finally caught up with her today after being cut from her reccurring role on Disney’s hugely successful star Wars TV show, ‘The Mandalorian.’
The 38-year-old Carano had appeared in several notable films over the years, including Fast And Furious 6 and Deadpool, but it was her role as Cara Dune in ‘The Mandalorian’ that had taken her acting career to new heights.
So much so in fact that there had been talk in recent times that her character could be on course to land her own spin-off show.
However, as her star power grew, Carano’s views on social media had become increasingly controversial, including sharing anti-masking and potentially transphobic views, as well as supporting conspiracy theories regarding votor fraud in the recent U.S. elections.
That’s led to Carano being under threat of being cancelled several times, but she hasn’t backed down from her viewpoints, which led to the final straw – a post in which she attempted to liken the treatment of Jewish people during the holocaust in Nazi Germany to the way some people in the U.S. are currently being hated for their political views.
“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,” Carano had written in a now deleted post on Instagram. “How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”
Heightened calls for her to be removed from her role on The Mandalorian quickly followed, and this time the axe did fall.
“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” a spokesman for the company said.
At the heigh of her MMA career it would have been hard to imagine that many years later Carano would be committing career suicide in this fashion.
Back then she was considered the first ‘face of women’s MMA’, years before Ronda Rousey rose to fame and fortune, and was adored for her fighting spirit, stunning looks and quiet, almost at times painfully shy girl-next-door demeanor, which seemed completely at odds with her chosen career path.
Carano left the sport in 2009 after losing a blockbuster fight with Cris ‘Cyborg’ by TKO, turning her focus to acting instead. At times there was talk that she could be on the verge of a return, and indeed she did have initial talks with the UFC’s Dana White about fighting Rousey in 2014, but it never materialized.
There was always a sense that Carano could have become a superstar, and in recent times her success within the Star Wars franchise appeared to have her on the brink of finally achieving that, but now she faces being blacklisted from the industry, with her talent Agency WTA having also chosen to remove her from their roster.
