Here’s everything you need to know about the recent backlash against ‘Emilia Pérez’ star Karla Sofía Gascón and how Jacques Audiard’s award-winning film and Oscar hopeful has seen its buzz dwindle in the past weeks. Could this hurt the film’s Oscar chances?
Karla Sofía Gascón has been making history of late.
The Spanish actress became the first openly transgender performer to be nominated for the Oscar for Best Actress, helping make Emilia Pérez the not only the most nominated film this year, but also the most nominated film not in the English language.
However, the Oscar-nominated star of French director Jacques Audiard’s narco musical is now facing backlash after past social media posts resurfaced, drawing criticism for their content.
The posts, originally shared between 2020 and 2021 on X have sparked controversy over remarks that denigrated Islam and that called George Floyd “a drug addict and a hustler.”
Gascón tweeted in May 2020: “I really think that very few people ever cared about George Floyd, a drug addict swindler, but his death has served to once again demonstrate that there are people who still consider black people to be monkeys without rights and consider policemen to be assassins.”
On 22 November 2020, Gascón 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.”
Gascón also criticized the 2021 Oscars, writing: “I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M. Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala.”
Gascón has issued an apology for her old posts on social media.
“As someone in a marginalized community, I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain,” the actress said in a statement via Netflix, where Emilia Pérez can be streamed. “All my life I have fought for a better world. I believe light will always triumph over darkness.”
This apology comes after Gascón suggested in an interview with Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo that there are attempts to smear her and the Emilia Pérez team.
“What I don’t like are social media teams — people who work with these people — trying to diminish our work, like me and my movie, because that doesn’t lead anywhere. You don’t need to tear down someone’s work to highlight another’s. I have never, at any point, said anything bad about Fernanda Torres or her movie.”
Torres is nominated for Best Actress for her work in I’m Still Here, which is nominated alongside Emilia Pérez for Best Film.
Gascón continued: “However, there are people working with Fernanda Torres tearing me and Emilia Pérez down. That speaks more about their movie than mine.”
Her comments led some users to tag the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, claiming that Gascón’s comments violated Academy rules of making disparaging remarks of another contender.
However, the Academy has concluded that no rules were violated.
Gascón released a statement to clarify the situation: “I am an enormous fan of Fernanda Torres and it has been wonderful getting to know her the past few months. 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.”
Torres recently became the first Brazilian actress to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress (Drama), more than two decades after her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, became the first-ever Brazilian nominee for Central Station (1998).
From awards favourite to Hollywood villain
Netflix will be hoping these recent controversies doesn’t derail Emilia Pérez’s Oscar chances.
Indeed, since its debut in Cannes, where it won two prizes, Emilia Pérez has dominated the awards circuit. It swept the board at the European Film Awards, the Golden Globes, France’s Prix Lumières, and secured Gascón multiple Best Actress nominations – also at the upcoming Critics Choice, BAFTA and SAG Awards.
However, the buzz seems to have turned against the filml in a matter of weeks.
This is not uncommon during awards season, especially in the run up to the Oscars. However, the vitriol aimed at Emilia Pérez has been particularly harsh.
The audacious Spanish language musical, set in Mexico but mostly filmed in France, tells the story of a Mexican drug lord who transitions and becomes a woman who fights for justice for the country’s “disappeared.”
The film’s characterisation of its transgender protagonist has been divisive, with the US LGBTQ+ organisation Glaad calling it “retrograde.”
The organisation stated that “while the film garnered rave reviews when it premiered at Cannes earlier this year, none of those reviews were written by trans people” and that “Emilia Pérez recycles the trans stereotypes, tropes, and clichés of the not-so-distant past.”
Gascón has has pushed back against trans and queer critics of Emilia Pérez, telling Vanity Fair that “being LGBTQ, having those labels, does not remove your stupidity, just like heterosexuality does not remove your stupidity.”
She went on to say: “What bothers me is that the people that say things like that [are] 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.”
The film – a fantasy soap opera musical, it should be stressed – has also come under scrutiny in Mexico for its depiction of the country, and the fact that it wasn’t filmed in Mexico or involved many Mexican performers. Detractors have also stated that it lacks proper nuance around cartel violence and the disappeared.
Emilia Pérez has only one Mexican performer in the main cast, Adriana Paz, as Gascón is Spanish, while her co-stars Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez were both born in the US.
Critics have started to label the film a Euro-centric depiction of Mexico and a racist mockery, to the point that Mexican filmmaker Camila Aurora released her debut film this week titled Johanne Sacreblu – a 30-minute parody of Emilia Pérez which features French clichés a-go-go.
Check it out below:
Director Jacques Audiard has addressed some of the backlash, describing Emilia Pérez as an “opera” and not “realistic.”
“If there are things that seem shocking in Emilia Pérez then I am sorry,” he said.
It remains to be seen if the backlash will affect his film’s chances at the Oscars in March.
In our review of Emilia Pérez, we said: “Audiard manages to confidently balance the knowingly kitschy aspects of the musical genre (one number set in a clinic has “Rhinoplasty! Mammoplasty! Vaginoplasty!” as a chorus) with some touching character-driven moments, without forgetting to thrill you and address socially-charged hot-button topics along the way.”
We also noted how Gascón dominated throughout, and how there was “power, pathos and earnestness seeping through every moment of Gascón’s performance, and the double-act she and Zoe Saldaña go on to form is magnetic to watch.”
Emilia Pérez was one of our Best Movies of 2024 and Karla Sofía Gascón led the way in Euronews Culture’s People of the Year 2024 – in which we stated that her “fearless turn makes her 2024’s most unforgettable silver screen star”.
The 97th Oscars take place on Sunday 2 March in Los Angeles (very early morning on Monday 3 March in Europe). Stay tuned to Euronews Culture for our coverage of this year’s Academy Awards.
