It’s been almost two weeks since Gina Carano was let go from The Mandalorian, Disney+’s first Star Wars show, on which she played badass Cara Dune. Given the nature of her firing — she’d caused controversy, in part, for a post deemed by many to be anti-Semitic — the MMA fighter-turned-actress was loath to grant just anybody her first full-on sit-down interview. But she soon found the right person: Ben Shapiro, the conservative commentator and editor emeritus of The Daily Wire, who had also recently offered her her first post-Disney job.
Over their hour-long chat — which had been teased Saturday but dropped Sunday — Carano had a lot of unkind words for her former employers, who she accused of “bullying.” But there was one former colleague she praised to the hilt: the show’s titular star Pedro Pascal.
“I adore Pedro. I adore him. I know he’s said and done some hurtful things. I don’t think posting anybody’s number on social media is okay, ” she said, referring to the actor sharing Senator Ted Cruz’s publicly listed office phone number on Twitter in early January. “But we had an agreement after we realized we were a little bit politically different. We had an agreement that, first and foremost, you’re a human being. And you’re my friend first.”
By defending Pascal, Carano was tacitly come out against some of her fans, who claimed a 2018 tweet in which he compared kids being locked in cages by the Trump administration to Jewish people in concentration camps. Carano’s offending post involved her making a comparison to conservatives, like her. While neither analogy is exactly ideal, they are not the same thing.
Carano and Shapiro also discussed said, and she claimed that she wasn’t trying to draw comparisons between being conservative and being Jewish during the Holocaust. She told Shapiro she is “so inspired by the gentle spirit of the Jewish people going through,” and that she wanted to “bring people together,” saying the post was “more about people tearing each other apart.”
She also said that being “cancelled,” as she put it, is not easy. “It’s maybe going to be one of the hardest things that you’ve ever been through,” she said. “But each day that goes by, you find your legs again, and you stop feeling sorry for yourself and you show up.” Meanwhile, given her new job, she’s going to be spending a lot more time with Ben Shapiro.
(Via EW and The Daily Beast)