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Assessing the Musk-Carano Case Against Disney

The wrongful termination suit, bankrolled by Elon Musk, over the actress’ firing from ‘The Mandalorian,’ is being portrayed as a battle over free speech. But the real stakes are much more complex—and Carano may be a proxy for political interests who view her as a different kind of star.

gina carano
From a legal perspective, L’Affaire Carano isn’t really about free speech so much as it is about political speech, and how her politics may have conflicted with Disney’s carefully cultivated image. Photo: Daniel Boczarski/WireImage for Disney
Eriq Gardner
February 12, 2024

Yes, yes, there is a lot of almost deafening, headline-grabbing culture wars hype surrounding The Mandalorian actress Gina Carano’s wrongful termination lawsuit against Disney, which materialized last week, a few years after the studio fired her for comparing the U.S. political climate to Nazi Germany on Instagram. On a superficial level, this is one of those everyone-hates-everyone-else situations: Carano’s allies have painted her as a defender of free speech while others suggest that she’s a hate-stoking idiot who authors juvenile tweets about her pronouns (“boop/bop/beep”), critiques of Covid lockdowns, and worse. Naturally, the hype around the case was magnified after it turned out that Elon Musk was bankrolling her complaint.