The Fall of ‘Emilia Pérez’

Oscars frontrunner film Emilia Pérez lost whatever goodwill it had this weekend when the film’s star Karla Sofía Gascón deactivated her Twitter account after users started sharing old tweets of hers sympathizing with Hitler and insulting everyone and everything from George Floyd to current co-star Selena Gomez to the coronavirus vaccine, Oscars diversity and Islam.

The Netflix film, a fictional, Spanish-language musical about a cartel boss who transitions later in life, garnered 13 nominations from the Academy at this year’s upcoming Oscars ceremony, including Best Picture and Best Actress. (The movie isn’t good, but when has that stopped Academy voters?) Gascón is the first openly trans actress to receive a nomination for any acting award.

A Jan. 30 Twitter thread from writer Sarah Hagi highlighted most of Gascón’s tweets, with many other users finding more posts.

it’s so insane that karla sofía gascón still has these tweets up. straight up have never seen tweets this racist from someone actively campaigning to win an ACADEMY AWARD. there are more than a dozen… pic.twitter.com/1rcNzkJXuo

— sarah hagi (@KindaHagi) January 30, 2025

Newly surfaced tweet from Karla Sofía Gascón being homophobic towards Miley Cyrus has been found:

“Evil, horrible, unnatural, lesbian perversion, they are going to hell.” pic.twitter.com/M7wExS04n4

— Miley Cyrus Access (@MileyNewsAccess) January 30, 2025

 

Karla Sofía Gascón weighed in on the Oscar ceremony from 2021, the first held following the COVID pandemic in which “Nomadland” won best picture. She wrote:

“More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films, I didn’t know if I was watching… pic.twitter.com/aesUZaNvks

— Variety (@Variety) January 30, 2025

 

In a statement released Friday, Gascón apologized for her remarks, which are standard fare on Twitter but definitely not Hollywood award nominee-acceptable, saying she received death threats because of her posts.

“I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt. 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.”

But Gascón also blamed “something dark” behind the posts and called this current news cycle a “campaign of hate and misinformation.”

“I have always used my social media as a diary, reflections or notes, to later create stories or characters, not as something that would be scrutinized down to the last of its 140 characters, since sometimes I, myself, am not even aware of having written something negative,” she wrote in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

What’s wild about all of this (besides the racism and hate speech, which is especially odd considering Emilia Pérez’s marketing has highlighted inclusivity and diversity), is that this could have been a non-controversy. Oscars season is famous for mudslinging tactics from one studio to another. Most of those controversies feel cooked up—remember how someone accused The Holdovers of plagiarism last year? Someone on Emilia Pérez’s marketing team just needed to tell the film’s stars to scrub their social media accounts sometime between its Cannes premiere and before Oscars nominations. There is no misinformation here; just Gascón’s own words.

The Academy should rescind Karla's nomination. Can't imagine they want someone on their telecast who's posted positively about Hitler on social media. pic.twitter.com/7uctkm6vvO

— Andrew J. Salazar @ Sundance (@AndrewJ626) January 31, 2025

After all of that, Gascón appeared in a tearful, hourlong interview on CNN en Español the night of Feb. 1. In the interview — which  Gascón apparently set up alone, with no involvement from Netflix — Gascón said she would not renounce her Oscar nomination over the controversy, apologized again for her tweets, said people took many tweets (including the one about Hitler)  out of context and were merely voicing hypothetical opinions that she condemned, and also said that many of the tweets were fabrications, including one from years ago where she allegedly called her Emilia Pérez co-star Selena Gomez “a rich rat.”

Finally, Gascón questioned the timing of the controversy, implying it was all a part of an Oscars smear campaign against her.

“They have dedicated themselves to searching, to put together all the things that I had said at a time that I had written —most of which are false … most of them I don’t even recognize that I wrote them,” Gascón said. “And they put them all together and so it seems that she is a very bad person and we remove her just when we can do the most damage, right in the voting period.”

But wait — there’s more

Even if Gascón’s tweets didn’t resurface, her words are still a reason why Emilia Pérez is a controversial film at this year’s Oscars.

In a Jan. 21 video interview with Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, Gascón praised actress Fernanda Torres, the star of the Brazilian film I’m Still Here, which is also nominated for Best Picture. But Gascón also criticized social media campaigns for films in the interview, saying:

“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. However, there are people working with Fernanda Torres tearing me and ‘Emilia Pérez’ down. That speaks more about their movie than mine.”

She later came under fire for possibly violating the Academy’s social media policy, which was updated in 2023 after a messy Oscars campaign season where agents and producers aggressively and openly campaigned on social media. The policy forbids making disparaging remarks about another nominee’s performance.

However, Gascón didn’t make disparaging remarks directly about Torres, so she did not violate any rules. 

Gascón later clarified:

“I am an enormous fan of Fernanda Torres and it has been wonderful getting to know her the past few months,” Gascón said in her statement. “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.”

I don’t think there’s any way Emilia Pérez comes back from these controversies, but the Academy is the same organization that awarded Crash and Green Book with its highest honor. Anything could happen.

Feb. 5, 2025 Update:

Karla Sofía Gascón will not be traveling from her native Spain to campaign for her Best Actress Oscar nomination in America because Netflix has refused to provide her with travel accommodations after the negative publicity of this past week, according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg.

Tensions are said to be high between the streamer and Gascón, especially after she went behind the company’s back to talk about her tweets in new interviews. Gascón and Netflix are only communicating through her agent, according to Feinberg.Netflix has also already removed Gascón from all of the awards promotional materials for Emilia Pérez, choosing instead to focus on Zoë Saldaña.