Gina Carano’s career imploded after Disney fired her in 2020 for opposing Black Lives Matter, questioning the election, and rejecting vaccine mandates—calling it a principled stand, not controversy. She sued Disney (backed by Elon Musk’s legal team) for wrongful termination and defamation, alleging public harassment over a tweet comparing modern propaganda to Nazi tactics, which she framed as anti-fascist. Now producing her own films in Montana, Carano credits faith for resilience but criticizes Hollywood’s ideological purge, where industry allies vanished overnight; Disney’s stock drop post-firing, she argues, proved public disapproval of its censorship. Her legal battle and creative pivot mark a defiant rejection of corporate cancellation culture. [Automatically generated summary]
Life is long and weird, and the longer it is, the weirder it gets.
You may have noticed that, but even by that unchanging standard, Gina Carano has had a pretty remarkable life packed into a relatively short amount of time.
So, in 2006, she began as a professional mixed martial arts fighter.
Within a few years, she was starring in big Hollywood films like Fast and Furious.
Then, in 2019, not that long ago, she got...
One of the biggest roles for her career.
She was on a Disney show called The Mandalorian.
In case you didn't see it, here she is.
Stay back, dropper.
unidentified
Easy.
Drop your weapon.
You're going to wish you never left Alderaan.
I saw your planet destroyed.
I was on the Death Star.
Which one?
You think you're funny?
Do you know how many millions were killed on those bases?
Drop your blaster.
As the galaxy cheered...
Last chance.
Destroying your planet was a small price to pay to rid the galaxy of terrorism.
And so then their second option was, well, for half the money, so it went from $4 million exciting serial killer movie to a $2 million non-union movie where that would have given...
You know, so many more people that were struggling at the time for not taking the vax, for not wanting to apply by the COVID restrictions.
And so The Daily Wire did put that on my, you know, my shoulders and said, you know, this is your decision.
This is your movie.
And I chose to go up and shoot the $2 million Western, which was called Terror on the Prairie.
I mean, you know, Disney didn't, I mean, I wasn't, I didn't cave to Disney, you know what I mean?
I'm not going to like go to Nashville and be like, okay.
I was so grateful, by the way, for the opportunity, you know, that they offered me.
But it just, when I got there, it was just two different options that I thought, I didn't think that that was what I was showing up to.
But they did, you know, they were like, okay, then let's go up and let's make this Western for two million dollars.
Definitely a lot more difficult.
It's kind of funny.
Online and on IMDb they say we shot it for $75 million and they're trying to write up all these reports that it went into theater and it only made $800.
And I'm like, no.
It actually was just streamed on the Daily Wire.
We made it for about $2 million that I know of.
And it could have been less than that.
And it was never in theater.
And you've got, like, all of the Hollywood, you know, press, like, look at, you know.
And it's even not, I believe it's still on IMDb, listed as $75 million, just to kind of, like, do these awful things to people like me.
And The Daily Wire, and, like, people like you.
It's like, let's just put as much false information that leads people astray.
But it ended up being a really good film, Terror on the Prairie.
I knew that after getting canceled and fired, I knew that even during that Daily Wire kind of Tarot on the Prairie stint, I was wounded like a broken animal.
I'm not sure if you experienced the same thing after what happened with you and Fox, but I think everybody handles it maybe differently.
To me, it looks like you jumped straight back in and you were hustling.
I have maybe a different energy where it's like...
I think you're just, you know, like a certain type of brain that, you know, you go forward, right?
Yeah, have to.
And mine was, I've not been like that.
Like when I've been wounded in relationships or in life, like, you know, I get hurt.
I'm sensitive.
So for two years I've been, you know.
In this, you know, kind of desert, you know, kind of, you know, like wondering, like, oh, God, you know, I see justice happening and I see people moving forward and I'm not moving forward like I thought I was going to and like I had, you know, said I was going to try to and I felt very just forgotten.
And harassed and discriminated and just put me through the struggle session, which I didn't know.
When you're going through it, you don't know that...
I was so naive at 2020. I haven't been living in the political realm at all.
I just pay my taxes and hustle for that next job, that next action job or that next drama job.
That's just what I've been trying to do for my entire life.
Besides my fighting career.
And so then it was just like when 2020 hit, it's like the shades got opened and I started actually looking around thinking, wait a second, wait a second, what's happening here?
Why are people allowed to riot on the streets and they're not allowed to go to church?
And why are big businesses staying open and small businesses are getting shut down?
And it was just, it bothered me.
It's like people forcing.
I know what it's like to not work for a year and work for three years and not to work.
When you take away that consistency, it does such an emotional, mental, spiritual thing on you that...
You know, some people don't know how to handle, you know, they start drugs, alcohol, addiction, and that's exactly what we've seen.
You know, we've seen all of this addiction and all this problem, you know, deaths, and I've lost two friends to overdoses.
You know, one to turbo cancer, one to, I believe, a vaccine.
You know, like, I had to get out of L.A. because my life was not safe there, at least where I was at.
You know, it's pretty expensive to live in L.A. And so it's either, like, keep in L.A. or, you know, try to move to maybe Nashville and see if that Daily Wire thing works out.
Well, that didn't really, you know, pan out, which, you know...
It's not like there's no bad blood there.
It's not where God wanted me, I don't think.
And so then I just kept on going and I ended up in Montana.
It's been used so aggressively and wrongly to persuade people in evil ways that are fake.
It's really turned people off because usually when people go to God or go to a place of God, they're searching because they're hurt and they're wounded.
And when you are hurt and wounded and then you get hurt and wounded by the people or a place that you feel is supposed to protect and be the safe place, I think then people just get really angry at God.
And I don't think that it's God that maybe they're angry at.
But I, in the last three years, have just grown so much closer and understanding.
And so it was actually at that point where I said, you know, I was like, God, you know, all these people are getting justice, you know, and I... I know I was done so wrong.
It was so wrong what happened to me.
And I know that there's so much more wrong that happened to so many other people.
And so I even felt like, you know, don't be a brat about this, Gina.
Like, there's, you know, doctors and lawyers and police officers and nurses.
And, you know, this is like...
Awful things are happening all around to everybody.
And so I just, I started looking at my justice as, you know, starting over in Montana and being able to see the big sky and just being so grateful for my surroundings.
And then finally, it was really interesting when I finally got that out of my heart and truly gave it over to God and was just like, it's yours.
If I stay in the desert of work and I never work again.
In this business, then, okay, then I need to learn a different skill.
You know, I need to figure out what I'm going to do.
I tried to pretend like I was there so many times, but to genuinely let that last inch of, like...
It's going to be okay, and I'm going to give it to you.
And a week later, I got an email.
A week later, I got an email from X, and they said that there were some lawyers that were taking up cases that people had possibly been fired for speaking their opinion on X, and they'd like to hear my case.
And Edward Trent, who is at the law firm, just an incredible man.
He was like, wow.
He was like, we've emailed a lot of people and you got it back to us pretty fast.
And then from there on, in the last, I guess it's been, that was before Christmas and it was probably in November, I think.
We've just been like, I'm sending them everything and I'm telling them my story and we're having long conversations and they're listening to everything that happened.
You know, I'm sending them emails that transpired between me and Disney and Publicis and all the other people, and I'm sending them everything I've got.
And they took that to X and Elon and said, we believe in this case.
Very much so.
Very much so.
And they presented it to X, and then X is like...
They had to get the permission from them, so I'm sure X has their lawyers looking through it.
yeah hey it's ducker carlson thanks a lot for watching that conversation with gina carona who is a very cool person you may have noticed that a lot of the e-commerce sites online are run by people who don't share your values and may actually despise you creepy tech oligarchs first and foremost selling your data the highest bidder also selling you garbage from third world countries not helping anyone but them But there is an alternative.
There's a marketplace trying to change the way this works.
It's called Public Square.
And it's got a new way of conducting e-commerce by connecting you with 80,000 small businesses who make things you can feel happy to buy.
Not guilty at all.
You're working for good, not evil.
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You can go to publicsquare.com slash Tucker.
I heard Elon say something, I read some statement where he said, well, you know, anyone whose free speech on X has been used against them can have our lawyers look at it.
And I responded to that, which I didn't think that anything would ever come of it, but he tweeted that out.
And I said, you know, in a quote tweet, I said, well, I think I qualify or something like that, smiley face.
Nothing happened for months and I was like, okay, well, you know, I didn't expect anything.
So, and then when that happened and I got that email, it's like, it's one of those, there's been a couple of those calls in my life or a couple of those moments in my life that I've just been like, oh my gosh, like, I get a chance right now.
I get a fighting chance to clear my name, to let the world know what happened here, to, you know, the world's a lot, come a lot.
And he's doing this not only for me in this big case.
He's doing this for many other people.
And I think there's just...
I think we're living in a time of such an incredible person that would be fighting for free speech.
On the biggest level, I mean, if we did not have what Elon Musk is doing right now, so many of us would be in such deep trouble.
Nations would be in trouble.
And I respect what he's doing, and I don't know why he's doing it.
I think that a lot of billionaires put their money into more selfish things, and he's choosing to put his money into the defense of free speech and the defense of...
And I have to imagine, you know, I have to imagine that I had to do something with May Musk, his mother, because I follow her too.
And I think, you know, how heartbreaking it's been for my family to watch me go through this hardship.
And I really wonder about the Musk family and what tough skin they must have had.
But what an incredibly classy woman that.
That woman is.
And I love following her because I see this came from somewhere, you know?
And yeah, I just think what an incredible family that has burdened such a tough moment in time that I think that he will go down in history as one of the greats.
What they really did was they put out this awful...
So I put up a tweet that has become an infamous tweet of saying that...
And I don't even know, because I just put it up in like a story section.
I didn't post it.
I put it in like the, you know, quick, everybody look through like the stories of the tweet, because tweets used to have the fleet section.
And it was basically saying that it didn't start like, you know, Nazi Germany didn't start just with people just waking up being Nazis and like, you know, demonizing, you know, like throwing people, Jews into the concentration camps.
It didn't start there.
It started.
Before that, it started with propaganda.
It started with, you know, you had to kind of start urging people to make it okay to demonize your neighbor and to hate people for whatever differences it was.
At that time, it was Jewish people.
And, you know, that's where it started.
And that's what made it so much easier.
For, you know, you're living in a house and then, you know, the Nazis come and their next, your next door neighbor is getting hauled off that, you know, maybe years before you guys were all having dinner and having this wonderful relationship and then it gradually happened.
It just wasn't something that happened just like that.
And that was what the meme meant to me was that I was trying to tell people now, like, don't demonize each other.
Understand.
You know, we're all human beings still.
And basically just bad things have happened in the past and to learn from the past.
And I thought that was something that everyone, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, that everybody could understand and get.
I thought that was a tweet for everybody.
The Hollywood Press and every major news and media that they came against me and they said, she just, she compared Republicans to the Jewish Holocaust and she's denigrating, you know, the Jewish community and like...
They called me, they smeared me as an anti-Semite, smeared me.
And I was like, wait, I don't...
And I still don't get how, how did you do that?
And why did people believe in it?
But, you know, like, and then what Disney did was they put out a statement that said, we are no longer working with, there is a statement, we're no longer working with Gina Carano.
And we basically think that she's denigrating people off of their cultural and religious beliefs, and they said something about me being abhorrent.
So you obviously know this since you worked in the business, but I mean, people who write about television and movies are directed to the word by the PR departments at the television and movie companies.
And the funny thing is like the entertainment lawyer, I think, was they would constantly be sending out, hey, we're having this Democrat, you know, at my house.
Come on over for, you know, raise some funds for the Democrat, you know, party, da, da, da, or whoever the candidate was that they were, you know.
And so all of these people just dropped me immediately.
And I was just like, okay, that's so much, you know, I mean, I knew that, like, maybe something could happen where Disney might be like, hey, you know, as professionals, I thought maybe they'd just be like, okay, well, maybe we're going to...
Not work with you.
Or maybe something like that could happen by speaking out about the things that I spoke out about.
But I found the things that I spoke out about were so much more important than the career part.
Because I felt like, you know, we needed to be talking about...
You know, the lockdowns, the mask mandates, the vaccines.
You know, I felt like we needed to...
I never even said who I was really voting for.
It was just I was getting really pushed into this, like, you're an extremist, you're an alt-right extremist, you know.
And so I thought maybe that that could be an option, but never in my wildest dreams would I thought that they would have, through Twitter or through a publication, without even calling me.
This is how I found out I was fired.
Online.
On Twitter.
Like, they didn't call me.
They didn't say, we're letting you go.
We're no longer going to work together.
This is why.
You know, it was just, she's denigrating people off of cultural and religious beliefs and she's abhorrent.
But again, you know that when you get attacked in the Hollywood trade press, that's because the company you worked for directed those reporters to attack.
And it's just this big mafioso that does not give the independent artist unless they're willing to comply and fit in 100% into that ideologies and their narratives.
Be basically these manufactured robots, you know?
I mean, I feel like there's the 1% of Hollywood that can do what they want and say and think what they want.
And it had the complete opposite effect, which was just overwhelming support.
It was pretty funny, like as soon as they were at the peak of their stock market ever in February 2021. And right when they fired me is when it started plummeting.
To what it is now.
And, you know, you're obviously very smart people and they're trying to salvage it, but people saw.
Yeah, you know, everybody I worked physically with, I never had a problem with.
And, you know, like, you know, me and Pedro, we connected after...
You know, Carl Weathers passed away.
Yes.
And, you know, there's all these lies and all these weird stories that people make up in their heads.
And, you know, one thing I can say is, you know, I adore Pedro.
And he said one thing to me.
He said, you and Carl were protectors.
That means so much to me, that he remembers me and our time together as me being a protector.
And it's important, like, people don't know what the real story is.
Like, why do you think Pedro's calling me a protector?
To his fans, I want, you know, there's a reason.
And there's stories that you don't know that happened.
And I was there, and I protect people.
You know, like, There was a person multiple times.
That's just my nature.
There was a person who was wearing a mask on set.
And they were at their end.
They were over time.
And they were crying.
And they were upset.
And they couldn't do it anymore.
They just couldn't.
They were broken.
There was a broken person in that mask.
And nobody was saying anything.
And I just simply went up to the director at the time and I said, This person's done.
They're done.
They need the contacts out.
They need the thing off their head.
They need to breathe.
They're broken.
And I was like, look, I worked longer hours than maybe probably any actor because my face was showing and I did all my own stunts.
So if you go back and you look at, like, the work records, you're going to find who was on set the most as, like, the actors, and you're going to find me at the top of that list.
And I said, I'll, you know, get my coverage tonight.
I know you guys wanted to do it, you know, the next day.
You can get my coverage tonight.
You give this man a break.
And I will, you know, I'll stay later and, you know, push my time.
And I'll show up early and, you know, don't worry about it.
But I've done that on numerous sets.
And that's, you know, because I do understand that, like, well, I come from a fighter's background.
And I want it.
And I wanted it so bad that I feel like I can, if I can have the energy to push it, I can do it.
And it crushes me when people are broken or hurting or being bullied.
Well, my next chapter is going to be, I'm going to make a movie.
I'm going to produce and possibly direct it.
I am going to do it.
I'm going to get it financed.
I don't know how yet.
But I'm going to make some art.
And it's going to be truly inclusive.
And I think that's going to be a gift.
That's where my heart has been.
I thought I was going to get that.
A couple years ago with the Daily Wire, I thought that was the path that was going to happen.
But I think God's teaching me a lesson right now of how to do this, how to learn how to put this together, and how to attract the people that you want to work with.
I lost my team when I got cancelled, you know, so I didn't have anybody and so the rebuilding of a life and everything has been my focus in the last two years.
Well, I've rebuilt that now and, you know, there's still things that I need to, you know, do.
I need to rebuild my body, you know, a lot of stress and not working and, you know, depression and all of that.
I need to focus on my health.
That's very, that's at the top of my list and I've been saying that.
But also to get creative and...
I think that's what's going to happen.
I think that's what I want to do is I want to direct and produce a movie and start being more in control of getting my stories out there that I like.