Leslye Headland, the showrunner of the upcoming Star Wars Disney+ series The Acolyte, is accused of being part of the Lucasfilm campaign targeting actress Gina Carano.
LONDON, ENGLAND – APRIL 07: Leslye Headland onstage during the Acolyte studio panel at the Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London at ExCel on April 07, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Kate Green/Getty Images for Disney)
In Carano’s newly filed lawsuit against The Walt Disney Company and Lucasfilm, her lawyer details how she was the victim of harassment. It specifically details that after she put the words “Beep bop, and boop” in her Twitter bio she was “subjected … to long phone calls demanding an explanation and criticizing her for not embracing what some see as mandatory solidarity with a vocal element of the transgender activist community.”
The lawsuit also details she was “required … to meet with representatives of GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination), a national organization that promotes LGBTQ+ acceptance, something she willingly did.”
Cara Dune (Gina Carano) in Lucasfilm’s THE MANDALORIAN.
After allegedly receiving positive feedback, The Walt Disney Company and Lucasfilm were not satisfied and “continued to demand a public apology. … Defendants went so far as to try and convince Carano’s publicist to force Carano to issue a statement admitting to mocking or insulting an entire group of people, which Carano had never done.”
The Walt Disney Company and Lucasfilm also “rejected Carano’s proposed alternate statement.”
(L-R): Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff), Cara Dune (Gina Carano), Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) and Koska Reeves (Mercedes Varnado) in Lucasfilm’s THE MANDALORIAN, season two, exclusively on Disney+. © 2020 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
From there, “Carano went to donate to a GoFundMe page allegedly set up in support of the transgender community. When she opened the link, she read that the fund was supposedly created by a Lucasfilm creative and was directly targeting Carano, defaming her by accusing her of being a “bigoted” actress. Accordingly, Carano did not donate.”
The lawsuit then alleges “Carano brought this to Lucasfilm’s attention, who denied the GoFundMe account was established by any Lucasfilm employee. Shortly thereafter, the account was changed to call Carano “ignorant” and the identity of the organizer was changed to no longer identify a Lucasfilm employee.”
(L_R): Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) and Cara Dune (Gina Carano) in Lucasfilm’s THE MANDALORIAN, season two, exclusively on Disney+. © 2020 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
It then reveals that Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy wanted Carano to join a struggle session on ZOOM with her and 45 other employees “who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community.”
The purpose of this struggle session, according to the lawsuit, “was a ‘litmus test'” to determine if she had the “willingness to endure such harassment and humiliation.”
The group was described by her publicist as “a friendly group that WANT Gina to succeed.” However, multiple employees that were to take part in the struggle session had contributed to the GoFundMe campaign including Leslye Headland.
The lawsuit states, “several had contributed to the anti-Carano GoFundMe account, including filmmaker Leslye Headland, who was scheduled to produce a Star Wars production.”
(L-R): Cara Dune (Gina Carano), The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal), Mythrol (Horatio Sanz) and Greef Karga (Carl Weathers) in Lucasfilm’s THE MANDALORIAN, season two, exclusively on Disney+. © 2020 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
Carano detailed much of this in an interview with Ben Shapiro back in February 2021 less than a month after The Walt Disney Company fired her from The Mandalorian.
She informed Shapiro, “I guess when we first started having problems, it had to have been on the pronoun usage. Maybe before that, well, because I was really upset about the shutdowns.”
She would later go over the controversy with the “pronouns” saying, “I ended up putting “Beep, bop, boop” in my Twitter bio. It was 100% to go to the Twitter mob that was telling you what to do, and it had zero to do with trying to go after the transgender community because I would never do that. Just me personally, I’m not trying to target anybody or go after anybody. And so as soon as I saw people started taking that wrong, I put right after that I was like, ‘No, ‘Beep, Bop, Boop.'”
She then explained why, “I literally said to my friend, I was like, ‘You what? Let’s put something in my bio just to show I can put whatever I want in my bio just like they put whatever they want in their bio like trash panda and all this stuff. So I just put these noises in my bio.”
Gina Carano is Cara Dune and Carl Weathers is Greef Karga in Lucasfilm’s THE MANDALORIAN, season two, exclusively on Disney+. © 2020 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
Later in the interview, she explained how Disney addressed her changing her Twitter bio, “I had a publicist at the time and they said, ‘You have to put out an apology. This is messed up. This is awful.’ And I was like, ‘Okay. I did say right after that tweet, I clarified for everybody this was not directed towards the transgender community in any way.’ And I’ve also been watching celebrities apologize left and right and it’s very ingenuine. And I said, ‘Can you just give me a moment because I’m kind of feeling emotional right now and can I just do my own research.'”
Carano continued, “So they were like, ‘Okay, yeah, do your research, but you need to get on the phone tomorrow with LGBTQ Transgender section.’ And I was like, ‘I honestly, I’m feeling very emotional can you give me a second?’ And they said, ‘No, you need to do this now.’ And so I did. I was like, ‘Okay, if we have to do it now then let’s do it now.’ And so I watched their documentary and I got on the phone with them.
“And they were basically two very gentle people and they were like, ‘We’re sorry, you stepped in what they call a land mind and we can tell you’re not hear against us.’ They actually reported back to Disney and Lucasfilm. They thought it would be a bad idea if they canceled me or if they let this affect anything,” she shared.
Gina Carano is Cara Dune and Carl Weathers is Greef Karga in Lucasfilm’s THE MANDALORIAN, season two, exclusively on Disney+. © 2020 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
Carano would then detail how Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company wanted a specific statement. She detailed, “We went through this very really long thing where it was like back and forth, back and forth. They wanted me to say this. I felt like it was ingenuine. I wrote out this massive thing that…but they didn’t want that. They didn’t want that. I think they thought I was already taking too much attention off of The Mandalorian, which was not my intention because I know how hard everybody works on it.”
She continued, “We got down to this statement within like two words, almost like two words, this ridiculous thing and they just said it was not apologetic enough. It was shocking. I want to communicate.”
(Left to right) Gina Carano is Cara Dune, Pedro Pascal is the Mandalorian and Carl Weathers is Greef Karga in THE MANDALORIAN, season two, exclusively on Disney+
Carano then transitioned to providing details on the struggle session that the lawsuit now alleges Leslye Headland was to take part in, “All these Lucasfilm employees are railing me on their websites. One of them, creative director, had a GoFundMe, and in the GoFundMe bio it was like, ‘This is because our ignorant actress.'”
She then shared, “So they wanted me to get on the phone with like 40 of their LGBTQ community. Not on the phone, on Zoom. And I felt like, ‘All these people, all your employees are slandering the hell out of me right now. You think I want to get on a video where they can then film it?’ I felt very kind of insecure about that. So what I offered them was the restaurants at the time had started opening back up and I was like, ‘Let me take four or five of them out to dinner and it’d be person to person. You can look me in my eyes. I can look you in your eyes and let’s have a genuine conversation.”
“I think it’s also a bit abusive that you want me to talk to 40 people, and hear 40 people that have been slandering… And maybe not all of them have been slandering me, but a lot of them probably had. And it was just like, ‘Wait. I don’t feel like I really deserved this. Don’t you guys see what’s happening online? It’s all these bots. It’s not even faces. It’s not real people. … I don’t know who these people are, children, or just bots, or whoever the hell these people are. They’re just awful,” she said.
(L-R): The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal), Cara Dune (Gina Carano), Greef Karga (Carl Weathers) and The Child in Lucasfilm’s THE MANDALORIAN, season two, exclusively on Disney+. © 2020 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
What do you make of Leslye Headland named as one of the individuals who was allegedly harassing Gina Carano and was to subject her to a struggle session?
I’m not sure how that’s going to help the lawsuit, but seems like more of what we already knew.