Since its arrival on Netflix in December, the Spanish-language French movie Emilia Pérez has been a nesting doll of controversies. The musical, directed by Jacques Audiard, has been slammed by critics and on social media for its regressive portrayal of trans id. The movie has additionally been critiqued for its “Eurocentric” depiction of Mexico — even inspiring a viral spoof movie made by Mexican filmmakers, referred to as Johanne Sacreblu — and Audiard himself has made dismissive if not offensive feedback about Mexico and the Spanish language. In the meantime, earlier this week, the film’s Oscar lead actress, Karla Sofía Gascón, was most notable for being at battle with “Brazilian Twitter” for feedback she made about her Greatest Actress rival Fernanda Torres’s social media crew.
Regardless of all this, Emilia Pérez is up for 13 Oscar nominations and is predicted to select up at the very least one for Zoe Saldaña within the Greatest Supporting Actress class. Gascón’s Oscar hopes are seemingly finished, nevertheless, following a sequence of offensive, resurfaced tweets in what could be one of the crucial stunning scandals in Oscars historical past.
On Wednesday, after Gascón was already within the information for her feedback about Torres, X customers started circulating years-old tweets from the Spanish actress utilizing derogatory language aimed toward marginalized communities. The tweets, from as latest as 2021, embody disturbing remarks about George Floyd, Islam, and even the nonwhite winners of the 2021 Oscars ceremony. Different tweets discover her casually utilizing anti-gay and different hateful language.
The Oscars aren’t unfamiliar with controversy. Nonetheless, the mounting points corroding the Emilia Pérez Oscar marketing campaign are fairly extraordinary — and even make the controversy surrounding 2019 Greatest Image Inexperienced E-book look quaint as compared. Within the days since her previous tweets have been uncovered, Gascón has arguably dug herself (and the movie) right into a deeper gap, giving inadequate apologies and even implying that her calling-out is a few type of conspiracy. Now, the movie’s producers are reportedly attempting to distance the film from its star, Audiard said he isn’t talking together with her both, and the Oscars ceremony itself is adapting across the controversy. It’s an ironic trajectory for a film that has been bolstered by the Hollywood institution for its variety and “progressive” themes.
What did Gascón’s tweets say?
On Thursday, journalist Sarah Hagi posted a thread with screenshots of greater than a dozen tweets from Gascón (in her native Spanish) disparaging Islam and immigrants from the Arabic international locations. In a single tweet posted on July 2, 2016, and translated by Vox editor Izzie Ramirez, she says, “Islam is turning into an an infection for humanity that must be cured urgently.” In one other tweet from September 2, 2020, Gascón, who’s from Spain, posted a photograph of a Muslim household, together with a girl carrying a burka, in a restaurant, mocking the function of girls in Islam. Within the tweet, she sarcastically decried the carrying of burkhas and what she perceives as the shortage of respect for ladies in Islam, capping it off with a phrase that interprets to “the deepest revulsion of humanity.”
In different posts, she factors out the rising variety of Muslims in Spain, lamenting that colleges will begin to educate Arabic as an alternative of English. She blames Islam for a number of terrorist assaults. There are additionally a number of tweets the place she a European slur referring to Muslims or folks with darkish pores and skin.
Customers then started circulating a startling now-deleted thread she apparently posted on June 8, 2020, about Floyd, whose dying by a police officer ignited worldwide Black Lives Matter protests. Within the first submit, a consumer with Gascón’s identify says, “Let me see if I perceive, a man tried to go off a counterfeit invoice after taking meth, an fool cop arrives, and goes too far in arresting him and kills him, ruining the lives of his household and mates, after which then man with the invoice turns right into a heroic marytr.” In one other assertion within the thread, the consumer refers to Floyd as a “drug addict and a hustler.”
The X account additionally uncovered different unsavory feedback, like a joke about China and Covid-19, and informal use of hateful language. A submit concerning the 2021 Oscars ceremonies, learn, “An increasing number of the #Oscars are wanting like a ceremony for impartial and protest movies. I didn’t know if I used to be watching an Afro-Korean competition, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M [feminist strike],” referring to an Worldwide Ladies’s Day march, which takes place on March 8. Customers additionally discovered a weird submit the place she refers to paparazzi pictures of Miley Cyrus cozying up with a girl as “lesbian perversion.” This submit could be seen as significantly baffling, as Gascón is herself a trans girl who’s married to a different girl.
Gascón’s X account has since been deleted, though screenshots of her feedback nonetheless abound on-line. On Friday, she additionally gave a terse apology to Selection: “I wish to acknowledge the dialog round my previous social media posts which have brought about damage. As somebody in a marginalized group, I do know this struggling all too effectively, and I’m deeply sorry to these I’ve brought about ache. All my life, I’ve fought for a greater world. I imagine mild will at all times overcome darkness.”
She had beforehand despatched a extra defiant unique assertion to the Hollywood Reporter, explaining why she deleted her account. In that assertion, she referred to as the backlash a “marketing campaign of hate and misinformation,” whereas implying that the opinions she said have modified:
“As a part of this society, I’ve expressed my disagreement or settlement with all of the associated points which have touched me and of which I’ve had an opinion, usually inaccurate, which has modified all through my very own expertise. I’ve at all times used my social media as a diary, reflections or notes, to later create tales or characters, not as one thing that will be scrutinized all the way down to the final of its 140 characters, since generally I, myself, am not even conscious of getting written one thing unfavorable.”
On February 3, she addressed the controversy on Instagram in an announcement that partly reads: “They’ve already received. They’ve achieved their goal, to stain my existence with lies or issues taken out of context.” Later that night, she appeared on CNN en Español the place she sat down for a tear-filled, hour-long interview to make clear the context of her tweets and claimed that they aren’t consultant of her character. She additionally alluded to a doable smear marketing campaign, declaring the timing of the resurfaced tweets throughout the Oscars voting interval, which ends on February 18.
“They put all of them collectively so evidently she is a really unhealthy individual, and we take away her simply once we can do essentially the most harm proper within the voting interval,” she instructed anchor Juan Carlos Arciniegas. She additionally stated a submit credited to her the place she calls her Emilia Pérez co-star Selena Gomez a “wealthy rat” was fabricated. In accordance with the Hollywood Reporter, Gascón arrange the interview independently “with out the involvement of anybody engaged on the movie,” together with its distributor, Netflix.
Up to now, Saldaña is Gascón’s solely co-star to deal with her resurfaced posts. At an Emilia Pérez Q&A in London on January 31, the place Gascon was anticipated to look however pulled out, Saldaña stated she was “nonetheless processing” Gascón’s remarks. “It makes me actually unhappy as a result of I don’t assist [it],” she stated. “And I don’t have any tolerance for any unfavorable rhetoric towards folks of any group. I can solely attest to the expertise that I had with each person that was an element, that may be a half, of this movie, and my expertise and my interactions with them was about inclusivity and collaboration and racial, cultural, and gender fairness. And it simply saddens me.”
Oscars campaigns are often messy, however not this messy
For many years, the sabotaged Oscars marketing campaign has been an enchanting — and usually amusing — phenomenon of awards season. Outdoors of Gascón’s antics, this 12 months alone has seen a number of different controversies threaten the probabilities of sure Oscar hopefuls. Final week, the editor of 10-time Oscar nominee The Brutalist, Dávid Jancsó, revealed that he utilized AI to good Adrien Brody’s Hungarian speech in a short a part of the movie. This led to questions on whether or not Brody’s efficiency, which has already earned him a Golden Globe, must be re-evaluated.
In the meantime, within the midst of Gascón’s controversy, social media customers discovered an article that her rival Torres had written slamming Amber Heard throughout her 2023 defamation trial towards her ex-husband Johnny Depp, in addition to a resurfaced video of Torres showing in blackface in a comedy sketch on a Brazilian TV present, for which she apologized earlier this week.
Different instances, these flubbed campaigns have usually emerged from aggressive PR measures, from the Bette Davis notorious write-in marketing campaign to the supposed “overkill” of Diana Ross’s Greatest Actress marketing campaign advertisements for Woman Sings the Blues to Melissa Leo’s self-funded “Contemplate…” plea — though she finally went on to obtain her Oscar. This type of zealous marketing campaign was famously codified by former movie producer Harvey Weinstein. Earlier than Gascón’s scandal, the mantle for essentially the most controversial latest Greatest Actress nominee belonged to Andrea Riseborough, who brought about an enormous kerfuffle when she obtained a stunning nod in 2023 for the small Sundance movie To Leslie, on account of sudden endorsements by celebrities and a doubtful electronic mail despatched to voters. The last-minute however shockingly environment friendly marketing campaign finally didn’t go towards the Academy’s lobbying guidelines, nevertheless it did put a mark on the actress main as much as the awards present.
Usually, although, it’s way more uncommon {that a} contender’s Oscars possibilities have been tainted if not fully shattered on account of hate speech — the latest instance being Lars von Trier’s antisemitic feedback throughout a press convention for his 2011 movie Melancholia. Nonetheless, Gascón’s controversy presents a extra advanced and head-scratching case, provided that Gascón is the primary brazenly trans appearing nominee. Regardless of how groundbreaking her nomination is on paper, her hateful feedback on social media blot out any notion that her nomination is a win for progress.
Awards forecaster Scott Feinberg additionally claimed that Gascón’s tweets have “severely broken the Oscar prospects of her movie,” outdoors of the Greatest Actress class. “Primarily based on my conversations in latest days with Academy members, many are going to have a tough time voting for Emilia Pérez in any class, provided that Emilia Pérez herself has grow to be poisonous,” stated the Hollywood Reporter journalist. Likewise, Netflix has reportedly distanced itself from Gascón with a purpose to salvage the movie’s Oscar possibilities. In a report for Selection on February 4, sources stated that Netflix had stopped speaking immediately with Gascón, as an alternative via her consultant at United Expertise Company. Sources additionally claimed that the streamer would not be masking bills for her journey throughout awards season. Moreover, a new “For Your Consideration” poster for Emilia Pérez doesn’t embody any pictures of Gascón. The movie’s FYC web page additionally incorporates a outstanding picture of Saldaña, not the movie’s titular lead.
Audiard has additionally disavowed Gascón publicly, calling her feedback “inexcusable.” In a Q&A with Deadline on February 5, he stated that he hasn’t spoken to her, saying that she “wants area to mirror and take accountability for her actions.” He additionally lamented that Gascón’s remarks and subsequent antics have been impacting the whole Emilia Pérez crew. “I don’t perceive it,” he stated. “And what I don’t perceive about this too is why she’s harming individuals who have been very near her. I’m considering on this factor of how [she’s] hurting others, of how she’s hurting the crew and all these individuals who labored so extremely laborious on this movie. I’m considering of myself. I’m considering of Zoe [Saldaña] and Selena [Gomez]. I simply don’t perceive why she’s persevering with to hurt us.”
Her controversial feedback additionally current a legit conundrum for the ceremony. People are already questioning how she’ll be included within the Greatest Actress presentation. The Academy lately introduced that it will be bringing again the “Fab 5” format, the place earlier appearing winners give a heartfelt introduction to every of the nominees. Nonetheless, sources clarified to Selection, following the Gascón scandal, that they’d solely be using the format for “the director’s class and different artisans awards.” There’s additionally at all times the likelihood for extra vocal backlash and even boycotts from the teams she focused.
Total, Gascón’s remarks have solely continued to light up the self-love of Emilia Pérez as a mission and a “progressive” choose for the Academy. Following her scandal, of us have brazenly questioned why a European girl was solid within the function of a Mexican character, and recirculated feedback about Audiard professing his personal ignorance about Mexico. They’ve additionally affected any remaining quantity of goodwill that the film had going for it, together with a highly effective assertion Gascón made on the Golden Globes earlier in January, when the movie received Greatest Image — Musical or Comedy.
“The sunshine at all times wins over darkness,” she stated. “You may put us in jail, you’ll be able to beat us up, however you’ll be able to by no means take away our soul or our resistance or our id. I wish to say to you, elevate your voice and say that I received, I’m who I’m, not who you need [me to be].” Who knew that, a number of weeks later, it’d be recycled for an apology?
Correction, February 3, 1:30 pm ET: An earlier model of this story misstated when Karla Sofía Gascón posted on Instagram and appeared on CNN en Español. They occurred over the weekend.
Replace, February 5, 5:45 pm ET: This story was initially printed on January 31, 2025, and has been up to date a number of instances, most lately to incorporate an interview with Jacques Audiard, studies that Netflix has distanced itself from the star, and the Oscars are abandoning their “Fab 5” format for appearing classes.