Actor and comedian Bill Burr is defending his former “Mandalorian” co-star, admitting The Walt Disney Company’s decision to ax Gina Carano from the hit Disney+ series was not “a fair move.”
“I thought it was funny that the liberals proved her point,” Burr said during a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “They just use outrage because they don’t like your politics. As someone who considers himself liberal, it’s disappointing to see the left become how the right used to be when they went after the Dixie Chicks after they criticized George W. Bush.”
Listen to the latest episode of the Faithwire podcast 👇
The 53-year-old celebrity said most people are “just trying not to get in trouble” but admitted there is “a small collection of lunatics” on the right and left who “cause hysteria.”
“And now there’s so many [media outlets] that want eyeballs, they make money off advertising, that they give attention to these crazy fringe people,” Burr explained, later adding he finds it “bizarre” there are people who will “try to destroy” others’ “ability to make a living” simply due to their opinions or beliefs on issues.
For those who might not remember, Carano was reportedly cut from “The Mandalorian” — a “Star Wars” franchise series — over social media posts some on the left deemed offensive. In the series, Carano starred as Cara Dune, a character so popular Disney+ and Lucasfilm were reportedly considering a spinoff based on Dune.
Those plans were scrapped, though, after The Walt Disney Company saw a series of tweets the actor posted in November 2020. At the time, she argued the U.S. needed to “put laws in place that protect us against voter fraud.” She also reportedly frustrated Disney insiders when she jokingly listed “beep/bop/boop” as her “pronouns” on Twitter.
The breaking point, however, seemed to come when Carano shared to her Instagram account a viral meme warning that the cultural divisiveness, political turmoil, and demonization of others prevalent throughout society today could lead to dangerous outcomes, like those seen in Nazi Germany.
“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,” read the meme, which Carano ultimately deleted. “How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”
Carano, 40, has since signed a movie-making deal with The Daily Wire. Her first film with the conservative media outlet, “Terror on the Prairie,” is set to release June 9.
Burr, for his part, also rebuked cancel culture during his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, telling the outlet, “You can’t take one incident or one quote and say, ‘That’s who you are.’ It took me 50 years to figure out who I am, and I’ve been with me for 50 [expletive] years. How are you going to figure out who I am in a joke?”
He likened the current climate to looking “back eight years in somebody’s Twitter feed and be like, ‘What about this?'” in an attempt to find something to strip people’s livelihoods from them.
“And nobody says, ‘You had to go back eight years to find something?!'” Burr said. “Sounds like this is a pretty good person if you had to go back eight [expletive] years!’ Meanwhile, there are people who get paroled from prison every day who have done so much worse, and they’re allowed to put their lives back together.”
“You can have 20-year wars, you can create synthetic heroin, you can [expletive poison the food supply,” he continued. “You can do all of that [expletive], and it’s barely going to read. They did a study the other day that 85% of people have plastic in their body — horrifying. Who’s going to be held accountable for that? Nobody. But I could tell you five different topics that if I did jokes about, I would get more in trouble than the people who caused that.”
***As the number of voices facing big-tech censorship continues to grow, please sign up for Faithwire’s daily newsletter and download the CBN News app, developed by our parent company, to stay up-to-date with the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.***