Soap Actor Says ABC Fired Him Over Political Beliefs, Not Vaccine Mandate

Actor Ingo Rademacher attends Dodgeball at the Hollywood Palladium in Hollywood, California, on Dec. 7, 2004. (Photo by Carlo Allegri/Getty Images)

‘General Hospital’ actor Ingo Rademacher, who was fired from the venerable soap opera for what Disney-owned ABC claimed was his refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccine, is appealing his previous lawsuit and claiming evidence of political animus towards him.

Mr. Rademacher, during a recent interview with Daily Wire reporter Megan Basham, detailed what his legal team found during the legal discovery process, including evidence of political animus towards him, which he said is the real reason he was fired.

It was in December of 2021 that Mr. Rademacher sued ABC. He lost the court case in June of 2023 and is now appealing the decision.

Actor Says Firing Over Vax Non-Compliance Was A Pretext

“So yes ... I was fired for not complying with the vaccine mandate, but I had kind of suspicions about maybe that it was political because in 2020, I started speaking out, you know I started speaking my political views on my social media accounts, Twitter and my Instagram, because I thought you know, that was my right—little did I know,” Mr. Rademacher told Ms. Basham during The Daily Wire’s Jan. 13th Morning Wire podcast.

According to the actor, those views included his saying, in 2021, that the COVID-19 vaccine was never designed to stop the spread of the virus. In another social media post, the actor expressed his view that biological men who identify as trans are celebrated in a way that devalues female achievement by taking honors that once belonged to biological women away from them.

In essence, Mr. Rademacher told Ms. Basham he was fired for his general criticism of the “media narrative.”

“Look, I’m not a Republican or Democrat,” Mr. Rademacher said. “I criticized the media narrative and that alone was enough to get me blacklisted in Hollywood and fired from GH.”

Mr. Rademacher’s Legal Team: ABC Neglected His Rights

“ABC had a duty to accommodate Ingo,” reads one of Mr. Rademacher’s legal team’s filings, according to the Daily Wire. “Instead, it put him through a sham process that was designed to fail, and which was meant to cover up the real reason for Ingo’s termination: his political views.”

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The Epoch Times reached out to ABC for comment. Previously, lawyers for the company have insisted that such evidence didn’t exist, according to Mr. Rademacher.

“At the last minute, all of a sudden, they found a bunch of emails and text messages that showed the political animus towards me,” Mr. Rademacher explained, expounding on what his legal team had found. “And that included emails and text messages between cast and crew. One of them was a producer calling me an ignorant racist—just name-calling for no reason. I think that kind of just shows the depth that Hollywood goes to in order to cover up the political discrimination.”

Fellow Fired GH Cast Member Returns to Show

At the conclusion of the recent Jan. 4 prime-time special “General Hospital: 60 Years of Stars and Storytelling,” fellow “General Hospital” star Steve Burton announced he was returning to the show. Mr. Burton had been let go for not complying with a COVID-19 vaccine mandate by Disney/ABC.

The next day, Mr. Rademacher took to Instagram with a video to clarify why he was fired from the show, as reported on michaelfairmantv.com.

In the video, Mr. Rademacher expounded on how he was fired for not complying with the vaccine mandate. However, in the discovery process, he and his legal team discovered that the show’s producers had actually been hoping to fire him prior to that, because of his personal views.

“... the news of Steve Burton coming back on the show was announced today and a big congratulations to him,” Mr. Rademacher wrote in his post, which accompanied his video.  “Also a big thank you to General Hospital for proving me right. I know some of you are going to say well, ‘If you wouldn’t have sued them, maybe you could’ve come back too,’ but that’s not true because what we found out during discovery is that they were trying to figure out a way to fire me (without getting sued) because they didn’t like my political and social views.”

Firing Has Negatively Impacted Soap Star’s Family

Mr. Rademacher went on to express how much he and his family were hurt by his firing and that he is fighting for anyone who has been let go from a job for the same reasons.

In his interview with Ms. Basham, he cited what transpired with “The Mandalorian” actress Gina Carano—who was fired from Disney-owned Lucasfilm in 2021—as an example of the same political discrimination he’s experienced.

“When she started speaking out against the narrative, they started looking for any post of hers that they could use to fire her,” he said. “And they didn’t even hide it.”

Ms, Basham also mentioned that fellow “General Hospital” cast mate Nancy Lee Grahn seemed to celebrate Mr. Rademacher’s firing openly online. Ms. Grahn has been known to voice her own left-leaning social and political views on social media.

“She jumped on the virtue signaling train,” Mr. Rademacher said, responding to a question from Ms. Basham concerning how he dealt with his work environment at the time. “And wanted to announce to everybody that I was ‘mercifully’ no longer on the show.”

Rademacher Fights for Freedom of Speech

Still, Mr. Rademacher said he didn’t mind working with someone like Ms. Grahn, who voices views that differ widely from his own. For him, it comes down to freedom of speech, which he supports for her as well as for himself.

“If you want to talk about your political views and social views on your social media account, which is what she does, then I get to enjoy the same right,” said Mr. Rademacher. “Now, she can disagree with me, and we can argue about it—not at work, obviously. But also, I don’t have a problem working with people that I don’t agree with. It doesn’t bother me ...”

As Mr. Rademacher put it earlier in his discussion with Ms. Basham: “Freedom of speech is at the heart of a well-functioning country. We have to have debate and nobody wants to debate any more. They just want to call you names, try to smear you as much as possible, which is what happened with me.”