PSA to all the publicists running Oscar campaigns: If the star of your movie has or has ever had a Twitter account, just nuke it. Delete it all. The Emilia Pérez team learned this the hard way when a slew of bigoted posts from the film’s star, Karla Sofía Gascón, resurfaced this month. The tweets have become the biggest controversy of this already wacky Oscars season and have cast a pall over the film’s heretofore very successful campaign. Somehow, there seems to be an update on this story every day, so let’s start at the beginning.
What did Karla Sofía Gascón say in her tweets?
In the tweets, most of which were posted between 2020 and 2021, Gascón shared Islamophobic, anti-Asian, anti-Black, and COVID-skeptical sentiments. The writer Sarah Hagi first uncovered the old posts on January 30, writing on X, “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…”
“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, who is Spanish and was originally tweeting in Spanish, wrote in one post from November 2020.
Variety reported that in addition to the many Islamophobic posts, Gascón once wrote a long thread about George Floyd’s death and the resulting protests. “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,” she wrote, “They’re all wrong.”
Gascón, who is the first openly trans woman to be nominated for best actress, also previously trashed the awards show she’s currently campaigning for. In 2021, 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 an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M. Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala.” That ceremony featured wins for Daniel Kaluuya, Nomadland director Chloé Zhao, and Minari actress Youn Yuh-jung. Frances McDormand and Anthony Hopkins also won awards that night, for what it’s worth.
Did she apologize?
She’s actually apologized several times at this point, but the first time was shortly after the tweets surfaced. “I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social-media posts that have caused hurt,” she told 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.”
Usually, that sort of boilerplate apology would be the end of it, but Gascón wasn’t done talking. The next day, January 31, the actress deleted her X account and shared a lengthy statement directly with The Hollywood Reporter (which she noted was sent “between tears”).
“I can no longer allow this campaign of hate and misinformation to affect me and my family, so at their request I am closing my account on X,” she wrote. “I have been threatened with death, insulted, abused and harassed to the point of exhaustion.”
Gascón attempted to explain herself, writing, “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 also claimed to not be bigoted, rather that she has “defended each and every one of the minorities in this world. Perhaps my words are not correct, many times due to ignorance or pure mistake,” she wrote. “I apologize again if anyone has ever felt offended or in the future.”
And then she kept talking?
Yes! On February 1, Gascón shared yet another statement, this time on Instagram.
It’s more of the same, with the inclusion of an interesting new detail: “Everyone who knows me knows I’m not racist (it’ll surprise you when you describe that the most important person in my life and who I love the most is Muslim) nor none of the things that you are judging me and condemning me without trial and without the opportunity to explain my true intentions,” she wrote. See? She can’t be Islamophobic if she loves one Muslim person.
On February 2, Gascón sat for an hourlong interview on CNN en Español, which THR reported she set up herself without the involvement of Netflix or the filmmaking team behind Emilia Pérez.
Gascón apologized again, saying, “My most sincere apologies to all the people who may have felt offended by the ways I express myself in my past, in my present and in my future.” Then she went on the defensive, claiming that her tweets were taken out of context or, in some cases, completely fabricated.
When asked about the Islamophobia in her posts, Gascón contended that what she is actually opposed to is radical Islam. “I have a relationship with a wonderful person, a wonderful woman who is Muslim, and she has taught me respect,” Gascón said, invoking this mystery woman once again. This time, she said that this person (she wasn’t specific about their exact relationship) is someone she “adores” and “loves” and who has “taught me so much about respect for people.”
As for a screenshot of a tweet that seemed to show the actress calling her co-star Selena Gomez a “rich rat” who will “never stop bothering her ex-boyfriend and his wife” back in 2022? Gascón said that one is straight-up fake. “Of course that’s not mine,” she said. “I have never said anything about my partner. I would never refer to her that way.”
Gascón also claimed that Gomez and Saldaña were still on her team, saying that her co-stars “support me 200 percent.”
Shouldn’t there be PR people stopping her from doing all of this?
They’re long gone. On February 4, Variety reported that both Netflix and the Lede Company, Gascón’s PR firm, had stopped speaking to the actress and were only communicating through her agent. They also reported that Netflix would no longer be paying for Gascón to travel to or be styled for awards-season events.
In new “For Your Consideration” materials for the film released in early February, Gascón’s image and name were nowhere to be seen, with Saldaña taking her spot as the face of the campaign.
Has Zoe Saldaña said anything about this?
She’s still trying to salvage her Best Supporting Actress hopes, so yes. On January 31, right as the scandal was breaking, Saldaña addressed it during a Q&A for the film in London. “I’m still processing everything that has transpired in the last couple of days, and I’m sad,” she told the audience. “It makes me really sad because I don’t support [it], and I don’t have any tolerance for any negative rhetoric towards people of any group.”
“It saddens me that we are having to face this setback right now,” she continued. “But I’m happy that you’re all here and that you’re all still showing up for Emilia, because the message that this film has is so powerful and the change that it can bring forward to communities that are marginalized day in and day out is important.”
On February 5, Saldaña spoke out again, this time on Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast. “I’m sad. Time and time again, that’s the word because that is the sentiment that has been living in my chest since everything happened,” she said. “I’m also disappointed. I can’t speak for other people’s actions. All I can attest to is my experience, and never in a million years did I ever believe that we would be here.”
As for Gascón’s claim that Saldaña is behind her “200 percent,” she reportedly responded with a “long blink” before reiterating, “I do not support any negative rhetoric of racism and bigotry towards any group of people.”
In an interview with Deadline, director Jacques Audiard also distanced himself from Gascón, calling her tweets “inexcusable” and saying that she is “playing the victim.”
“She is in a self-destructive approach that I can’t interfere in, and I really don’t understand why she’s continuing,” Audiard said. “I’m thinking in this thing of how hurting others, of how she’s hurting the crew and all these people who worked so incredibly hard on this film. I’m thinking of myself, I’m thinking of Zoe [Saldaña] and Selena [Gomez]. I just don’t understand why she’s continuing to harm us.”
Gascón must have stopped talking by now, right?
You’d think! Instead, on February 6, she issued another apology, this time addressing Audiard’s comments. “Following Jacques’ interview that I understand, I decided, for the film, for Jacques, for the cast, for the incredible crew who deserves it, for the beautiful adventure we all had together, to let the work talk for itself, hoping my silence will allow the film to be appreciated for what it is, a beautiful ode to love and difference,” she wrote on Instagram. “I sincerely apologize to everyone who has been hurt along the way.”
Somewhere in Idaho, Demi Moore is in her carpeted bathroom practicing her acceptance speech. And given that this scandal seems to have made the whole movie radioactive, Ariana Grande might be making a list of people to thank, too.
This post has been updated.