Daisy Ridley claps back at Ted Cruz's Rey diss: 'I am very happy to be an emotionally tortured Jedi who doesn't leave their state'
Flight-hopping Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was among those up in arms over Disney’s firing of The Mandalorian co-star Gina Carano, who was cut loose from the Star Wars spinoff series earlier this month following uproar over several offensive social media posts — including one in which she likened blowback against conservatives to being a Jewish person during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.
Cruz defended Carano in a Twitter post on Feb. 11, but in doing so the purported Star Wars fan also felt the need to take shots at the franchise’s other notable female leads.
“Texan Gina Carano broke barriers in the Star Wars universe: not a princess, not a victim, not some emotionally tortured Jedi,” wrote Cruz. “She played a woman who kicked ass & who girls looked up to. She was instrumental in making Star Wars fun again. Of course Disney canceled her.”
Texan Gina Carano broke barriers in the Star Wars universe: not a princess, not a victim, not some emotionally tortured Jedi. She played a woman who kicked ass & who girls looked up to. She was instrumental in making Star Wars fun again. Of course Disney canceled her.
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 11, 2021
The “emotionally tortured Jedi” line was a not-so-subtle shot fired at Daisy Ridley's Rey, the heroine of the latest Star Wars trilogy sequel who overcame the trauma of being orphaned after the murder of her parents. The “princess” and “victim” descriptions, meanwhile, were likely references to Carrie Fisher’s princess-turned-Gen. Leia Organa and Natalie Portman’s Padmé Amidala.
In an interview with Yahoo Entertainment Tuesday promoting her new sci-fi thriller Chaos Walking, Ridley says she had not heard Cruz’s attempted Rey diss, but responded to it on the spot, referencing Cruz’s heavily criticized trip to Cancún last week while his state experienced a historic, deadly freeze and devastating power outages. (The politician subsequently blamed the impromptu vacation on his daughters in a misleading statement claiming he was only leaving for a day. He later admitted it was a blunder and apologized in a TV interview.)
“I did not know, and I am very happy to be an emotionally tortured Jedi,” the actress says, “who doesn’t leave their state when it’s having a terrible time.”
Ouch.
Our thoughts to Cruz as he recovers from the wrath of an emotionally tortured Jedi.
Chaos Walking opens March 5.
— Video produced by Jen Kucsak and edited by John Santo
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