Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón is under fire after old tweets uncovered a range of troubling opinions on subjects including Islam and George Floyd.
The Spanish actor, who recently became the first ever openly transgender person to receive an acting nomination at the Oscars, has since deleted a number of tweets after users, including writer Sarah Hagi, uncovered them. Variety and the Hollywood Reporter have since reported the news and translated older posts.
Gascón, originally in Spanish, called Floyd “a martyr hero” weeks after his death and wrote: “I truly believe that very few people ever cared about George Floyd, a drug addict and a hustler, but his death has served to highlight once again that there are those who still consider Black people to be monkeys without rights and those who consider the police to be murderers. All wrong.”
She followed up by writing that it “is no longer a question of racism but social classes that feel threatened by each other”.
In November 2020, she also wrote about “more and more Muslims in Spain” before adding: “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. Maybe next year instead of English we’ll have to teach Arabic.”
In another post, she wrote: “Until we ban religions that go against European values and violate human rights, such as Islam, under the protection of freedom of worship, we will not end part of the huge problem we face. Faith manipulates those who cling to faith.”
In a tweet from 2016, she also wrote: “Islam is becoming a hotbed for infection for humanity that urgently need to be cured.”
In a post about the Oscars after the 2021 ceremony where Nomadland took home 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 an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M. Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala.”
Gascón, who shared the best actress prize at last year’s Cannes film festival with her co-stars, has since released a statement. “I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt,” she said. “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.”
Netflix purchased the film at Cannes and has yet to comment.
Gascón recently made headlines for criticising the social media team involved with her fellow best actress Oscar nominee, I’m Still Here star Fernanda Torres. “I have never, at any point, said anything bad about Fernanda Torres or her movie,” she said in an interview. “However, there are people working with Fernanda Torres tearing me and Emilia Pérez down. That speaks more about their movie than mine.”
She later clarified that it wasn’t meant to be an attack on Torres but on “toxicity and violent hate speech on social media”.
Emilia Pérez has been nominated for 13 Oscars, a record for a film not in the English language, yet has faced criticism from both the LGBTQ+ community and in Mexico, where it is set. It tells the story of a cartel boss transitioning into a woman.
Advocacy group Glaad called it “a profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman” and that it represented “a step backward” for representation while the film has been accused of perpetuating Mexican stereotypes.
French director Jacques Audiard has since apologised: “If there are things that seem shocking in Emilia Pérez then I am sorry … Cinema doesn’t provide answers, it only asks questions. But maybe the questions in Emilia Pérez are incorrect.”
