Disney CEO defends Gina Carano's firing from 'The Mandalorian': We stand for 'values that are universal'

• Disney's annual shareholder meeting took place Tuesday.
• A shareholder inquired about Gina Carano's firing from "The Mandalorian" in February.
• Chapek said Disney stands for values of respect, decency, and inclusion without mentioning her name.

Disney CEO Bob Chapek defended Gina Carano's firing from "The Mandalorian" during the company's annual shareholders meeting Tuesday.

During a question and answer portion of the call, a shareholder asked why Carano was fired from the Disney Plus original series, asking if the Walt Disney Company punishes conservatives.

Specifically, the shareholder asked, "It's clear that there's a new blacklist punishing conservatives in the entertainment industry. Disney Plus actors Pedro Pascal and Gina Carano tweeted similar analogies of current political events to Nazi Germany. Yet only Carano, who is considered a conservative, was fired from 'The Mandalorian.' Regarding Disney, a blacklist, this is the way?"

Without saying either star's name, Chapek responded saying, "I don't really see Disney as characterizing itself as left-leaning or right-leaning."

"Yet, instead, standing for values, values that are universal: values of respect, values of decency, values of integrity, and values of inclusion," Chapek continued. "We seek to have not only how we operate, but the content that we make reflective of the rich diversity of the world that we live in and I think that's a world that we all should live in, in harmony and peace."

Chapek then carried on with the question and answer portion of the call.

Carano, who played former Rebel shock trooper Cara Dune, was fired in February from the Disney Plus hit after comparing modern-day Republicans to Holocaust victims.

"Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children," Carano wrote in the now-deleted Instagram post in which she added: "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. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?"

Pascal, who plays the titular character on the Disney Plus series, previously shared a now-deleted post on Instagram which compared Donald Trump voters to Nazis.

Carano's firing did not come as a direct result of one social-media post.

It was a culmination of multiple social media posts across many months in which the actress shared anti-mask memes, pushed conspiracy theories, and appeared to mock pronouns of trans people.

In February, a Lucasfilm represtative said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter that Carano's social-media posts were "abhorrent and unacceptable."

In December 2020, "The Mandalorian" creator Jon Favreau said the show's third season was in pre-production. Spin-off series, "The Book of Boba Fett," is expected to debut ahead of it in December 2021.

Carano, meanwhile, is collaborating on a new movie with Ben Shapiro's conservative website, The Daily Wire.

You can listen to the shareholder call here. The question about Carano starts 44 minutes into the webcast replay.