Karla Sofía Gascón is turning out to be just as controversial as her highly-acclaimed, audience-panned movie musical, Emilia Pérez.
Emilia Pérez, which beat Wicked for best musical comedy or musical at the Golden Globes and scored the most Oscar nominations of any film this year, was already at the center of film Twitter discourse when its star’s xenophobic and racists tweets resurfaced on the internet. Here’s everything you need to know about Karla Sofía Gascón’s potentially Oscar-losing controversy.
Wait, what’s the problem with Emilia Pérez?
The Netflix film tells the story of Rita (Zoe Saldaña), a Mexican lawyer hired to help a cartel leader (Gascón) start a new life by faking their death and undergoing gender-affirming surgery. The film itself was directed by Jacques Audiard, a cis male French man.
Though the film’s received accolades from Cannes Film Festival, the Golden Globes, and other Hollywood organizations, many believe it mischaracterized every community depicted in the thriller, from Mexicans to trans women.
While Selena Gomez has been criticized for her Spanish, LGBTQ voices have been denouncing the film’s depiction of the main character’s transition, with GLAAD describing it as a “step backward for trans representation.”
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Beyond its controversial subjects, the film only received a 19% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. It also doesn’t help that the filmmakers utilized AI to improve Gascón’s vocals, blending her voice with French pop star Camille, per Forbes.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Karla Sofía Gascón’s troubles started before her tweets went public.
Gascón was already facing backlash for her response to the film’s LGBTQ critics. “Being LGBTQ, having those labels, does not remove your stupidity, just like heterosexuality does not remove your stupidity,” she told Vanity Fair on January 6. “What bothers me is that the people that say things like that just sitting down at home doing nothing. If you don’t like it, go and make your own movie. Go create the representation you want to see for your community.”
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
In that same interview, Gascón claimed “many are running a negative, nasty campaign against the film,” which could be considered foreshadowing part of the controversy to come.
On January 23, she’s nominated for an Oscar.
On January 23, Gascón made history as the first out trans woman nominated for best actress by the Academy. As for her cohorts, Emilia Pérez scored 13 nominations, including best picture, best director, and a best supporting actress nod for Saldaña.
Read moreKarla Sofía Gascón Just Made History as the First Out Trans Actress to be Nominated for an Oscar
The Academy has recognized just two trans performers before her.
Then Gascón is accused of breaking an Academy rule.
On January 28, Gascón comes under fire for mentioning her fellow best actress nominee Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here) in an interview with Brazilian daily newspaper Folha de S.Paulo. Here’s a translation of what she said in Spanish, per Rolling Stone:
“I don’t like that there’s a social media team that works around these people that are attempting to discredit my work and my film, because that doesn’t take us anywhere. You will never see me talking negatively about Fernanda Torres or her film, but on the contrary, I do see many people working around Fernanda Torres who talk badly about me, and Emilia Pérez.”
Some believe Gascón’s statement violates the Academy’s rule against “public communication by anyone directly associated with an eligible film attempting to cast a negative or derogatory light on a competing film or achievement.” The policy expressly forbids “any tactic that singles out ‘the competition’ by name or title.”
However, Gascón claimed she was not speaking of those “directly associated” with Torres in a statement to Variety on January 29. “I am an enormous fan of Fernanda Torres and it has been wonderful getting to know her the past few months,” she said. “In my recent comments, I was referencing the toxicity and violent hate speech on social media that I sadly continue to experience. Fernanda has been a wonderful ally, and no one directly associated with her has been anything but supportive and hugely generous.”
On January 29, a source told Rolling Stone that the Academy found “no campaign promotional regulation violation in Gascón’s statement since nothing disparaging was said about the film, nominee or performance.”
That same day, Gascón allegedly described herself as “Public Enemy No. 1” in a since-deleted X.com post, per People.
A day later, her offensive tweets go public.
On January 30, journalist Sarah Hagi posts screenshots of a slew of xenophobic, racist, and hateful tweets reportedly posted by Gascón, many of which targeted Muslims. Variety reports that many were deleted that same day and were “largely posted between 2020 and 2021.”
In one alleged tweet translated by Variety, she wrote, “I’m Sorry, Is it just my impression or is there more muslims in Spain? Every time I go to pick up my daughter from school there are more women with their hair covered and their skirts down to their heels. Next year instead of English we’ll have to teach Arabic.”
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
She also posted controversial statements about George Floyd and diversity at the Oscars. “More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films, I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M,” she reportedly wrote in 2021. “Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala.”
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Backlash, of course, was swift.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Karla Sofía Gascón apologizes and deletes her X.com account.
“I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt,” Gascón said in a statement obtained by Variety on January 30. “As someone in a marginalized community, I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain. All my life I have fought for a better world. I believe light will always triumph over darkness.”
Hours later, Gascón issued a public apology via The Hollywood Reporter, which the outlet translated from Spanish:
“I’m sorry, but I can no longer allow this campaign of hate and misinformation to affect neither my family nor me anymore, so at their request I am closing my account on X,” she wrote “between sobs,” per THR. “I have been threatened with death, insulted, abused and harassed to the point of exhaustion. I have a wonderful daughter to protect, whom I love madly and who supports me in everything.”
Gascón then apologizes for her social media presence, which she says “has taken a terrible turn.” She also refers to her opinions as “erroneous” and likens her social media to a diary of reflections and notes, “not as something that would be scrutinized down to the last of its 140 characters.” Read the statement in full here.
This article may be updated.
The post Karla Sofía Gascón: The Emilia Pérez Star’s Oscar Season Controversy, Explained appeared first on Glamour.
