Actress Gina Carano has sued Disney and Lucasfilm after she was sacked in 2021 over a social media post in which she compared being a Republican to being a Jew during the Holocaust, Ednews reports referring to the BBC.
The lawsuit is being funded by Elon Musk, who made an open call on his platform X for others to join the suit. Ms Carano is seeking $75,000 (£60,000) in damages. She is also asking the court to force Lucasfilm to recast her. Representatives for the defendants were not immediately available for comment. Ms Carano, 41, a former MMA fighter, portrayed Cara Dune in the first two seasons of the Disney+ show The Mandalorian. During that time, she frequently tangled online with left-wingers.
But critics demanded she be fired after she shared a post on her Instagram account in February 2021 equating the persecution of Jews by the Nazis to the political climate Republicans face today.
"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," the post read.
"How is that any different from hating someone for their political views."
That same day, Ms Carano was dropped by Lucasfilm, the production company behind the show, as well as UTA, the talent agency that had represented her for nearly two years.
In a statement at the time, a Lucasfilm spokesperson said "her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable".
UTA is not named in Tuesday's court filing, which alleges that the Walt Disney Company was at fault for the agency dropping her.