Cara Dune and Din Djarin are still friends in real life, even if they are no longer venturing through the galaxy together in The Mandalorian. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Gina Carano revealed that hostilities that arose from her legal dispute with Lucasfilm and the Walt Disney Co.—as well as the social media battles that sparked division with some fans—does not extend to her fellow actor. She said she remains in touch with Pedro Pascal, most recently over the death of their costar Carl Weathers.
“I loved disappearing into this strange world of spaceships and galaxies and alien characters,” Carano told journalist Seth Abramovitch in the article. “I loved everybody I worked with. The directors, the actors, the sound department—everybody got along. It was just amazing.”
The long and complicated ordeal (chronicled in full in this Vanity Fair report from 2020) started when Twitter users came into conflict with Carano amid efforts to persuade her to post politically supportive messages. Some urged her to add pronouns to her online bio in solidarity with trans activists, while others sought supportive hashtags for the Black Lives Matter movement. Carano resisted those demands, and the former MMA fighter also lashed back against abusive replies, which led to escalating anger on all sides.
In particular, her sarcastic addition of “Beep/Bop/Boop” to her bio rather than actual pronouns was received as mockery. “I was just fed up. So I was like, ‘Fine, I’ll put something in my bio: ‘boop/bop/beep.’ I thought it was cute, like R2-D2,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. Her “likes” of others’ posts that were critical of violence during the BLM protests also provoked supporters of the movement.
Later, Carano did begin to post political commentary to Twitter and Instagram. But her anti-vaccine and anti-mask remarks during the pandemic, as well as skeptical comments about the official results of the 2020 presidential election, only deepened the anger toward her. A February 2021 post in which she used a photograph from the Holocaust to compare present-day discourse over divisive political views to the extremes of Nazism marked a breaking point: Lucasfilm released a statement denouncing her posts and noted that the company had no current projects with her and none slated for the future.
Carano recently filed a lawsuit against Lucasfilm and its parent company, Disney, for discrimination and wrongful termination that is being funded by billionaire Elon Musk, who publicly offered legal support for those who felt they had suffered unfair career setbacks due to remarks made on Twitter, which he purchased in 2022 and renamed X. In the lawsuit, Carano notes that other Star Wars actors, including Mark Hamill and Pascal himself, have also posted political remarks to social media, but she claims she was unfairly treated by comparison. Disney CEO Bob Iger was asked for a comment on the lawsuit, but offered only a one word reply: “None.”
“That was a wise answer,” Carano told The Hollywood Reporter. “I think he’s a very smart man. I know that he’s probably dealing with a lot right now.”
Despite all the controversy, hostility, and legal filings, Carano maintains that she and Pascal remain on friendly terms. She said Pascal, who has a sibling who is trans, even offered her advice in the early days of the furor over how to respond to the pronouns issue. “He was telling me, ‘Just put #transrights in your feed. Do it and they’ll leave you alone,’” she told THR, although it was advice she didn’t take: “That’s not my style, to put hashtag anything. I’m also not going to put #TrumpsRights.”
“Me and Pedro were so close,” she added. “He knows 1,000 percent I’m not homophobic or transphobic. He texted me after Carl Weathers passed away. We had our conversation and it was beautiful. One thing he did say was, ‘Thank you. You and Carl Weathers have always been protectors.’ And he knows what that means, and I know what that means, and I wish I could tell why. We basically left it at ‘I can’t wait to give you a big hug.’”
Neither Lucasfilm nor Pascal representatives responded immediately to VF’s request for comment.