Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón’s Oscars Controversy, Explained
Emilia Pérez‘s monumental 13 Oscar nominations were remarkable for a lot of reasons, including Karla Sofía Gascón’s Best Actress nod, which made her the first out trans performer nominated for an Oscar. (Elliot Page was nominated in 2007, but was not yet out.) It was a major milestone in Oscars history, even as the film itself has divided critics and offended the communities it aims to represent. When asked about the backlash from queer and trans critics, including our own, Gascón didn’t mince words: “You must be super well-adjusted to criticize the work of 700 people from your couch, sitting there next to your PlayStation. Second, they claim to speak for everyone. Let me tell you: Being LGBT doesn’t make you less of an idiot.”
Still, there was plenty of excitement around her nomination.
But now, Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón is on an apology tour for recently uncovered racist and otherwise offensive tweets. According to these apologies, she feels she’s being unfairly attacked, which is a common response from people facing the consequences of their own actions. I’m often wary of “cancel culture” because people can grow and change and often their more recent actions don’t align with long-forgotten posts from many years ago, but Karla Sofía Gascón was saying these really disturbing things again and again, as recently as 2022, when she was in her 50s.
“When someone in a historic position representing a film built on so-called progressive values has a history of racist and bigoted tweets, it exposes the hypocrisy of it all,” Journalist Sarah Hagi told Variety. This isn’t about meaningful representation — it’s just marketing. And that marketing falls apart when the person at the center of it is a racist bigot.”
And we’re not talking about one small misstep, or some implied or thinly veiled racism, or one moment where she accidentally misspoke. Hagi uncovered a LOT of posts from the actress that are just blatant Islamophobia, targeting Muslim people on multiple occasions, plus more racism including anti-Black racism in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and an anti-vaccine tirade that was full of harmful Chinese stereotypes. Posts that were not deleted until after Hagi posted a thread of screenshots that started to get traction.
A few days prior to the resurfacing of the tweet, Gascón upset fans of I’m Still Here, after complaining in an interview that “people working with” fellow Best Actress nominee Fernanda Torres, the star of I’m Still Here, were “tearing me and Emilia Pérez down,” which, she said, “speaks more about their movie than mine.” She later apologized and praised Torres and her performance, emphasizing that she wasn’t taking aim at her specifically, but people supporting her. Some argued that this rhetoric was at odds with the Academy’s social media regulations surrounding making disparaging remarks about other nominees, but it was not.
Gascón says she is not backing out of the Oscars though, despite one of the uncovered tweets from 2021 being a complaint about the increasing diversity of the awards show, saying watching the awards take place was like “watching an Afro-Korean festival” or “a Black Lives Matter demonstration.” She has issued multiple statements, including a tearful video interview with CNN.
She said in one statement that she “used social media as a diary, reflections or notes, to later create stories or characters,” adding, “I have defended each and every one of the minorities in this world and supported freedom of religion and any action against racism and homophobia in the same way that I have criticized the hypocrisy that underlies them, because the first thing I am critical of is myself.”
In another written interview, she said she wouldn’t step down from her Oscar nomination, because she “has not committed any crime” and furthermore, “nor have I harmed anyone.” (Which I would argue is not true.) She said in a response that people have set out “to stain my existence with lies or things taken out of context,” but this isn’t hearsay; we can see the tweets. And there is no context that would make them any less offensive. (She also did the classic “I can’t be racist, I have a Muslim friend” bit in one of her so-called apologies…)
She shut down her X account on Friday morning. At a Q&A that same day, which she was scheduled to attend but did not, Zoe Saldaña said she was still processing, but felt “really sad because I don’t support it, and I don’t have any tolerance for negative rhetoric towards people of any group.” She reiterated having had a positive experience making the film.
“Based on my conversations in recent days with Academy members, many are going to have a hard time voting for Emilia Pérez in any category, given that Emilia Pérez herself has become toxic,” wrote Scott Feinberg in The Hollywood Reporter, lamenting also the dim prospects “of her colleagues who were also nominated for the film, including Saldaña, who has been the best supporting actress frontrunner for months.”
Netflix has allegedly released a new FYC poster for Emilia Pérez, not just de-emphasizing Karla Sofía Gascón, but erasing her completely. It’s also been reported that Gascón will not be coming to the U.S. for any of this week’s awards activities including the AFI Awards luncheon, the Critics Choice Awards, the Producers Guild Awards, and the Santa Barbara Film Festival.
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