
Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón, currently under fire for her past tweets attacking various minority groups, just gave an hour-long interview on CNN to set the records straight.
“I have not committed any crime nor have I harmed anyone, I am not a racist, nor am I anything that all these people have taken it upon themselves to try to make others believe that I am,” a tearful but defiant Gascón told CNN anchor Juan Carlos Arciniegas, stressing that her tweets were intentionally misinterpreted to damage her Oscar campaign. Gascón is nominated for Best Actress for playing a transitioning gangster in Emilia Pérez, making her the first ever transgender actress to be nominated in the category.
Last week, Gascón drew public backlash for alluding that the people in her fellow nominee Fernanda Torres’ team are badmouthing her and her movie. She walked back the comment a day later, but then came the viral post by journalist Sarah Hagi unearthing Gascón’s past tweets. Among others, her resurfaced tweets – dated back as early as 2019 – made insensitive comments about George Floyd, Muslims in Spain, immigrants and diversity at the Oscars.
“I’m Sorry, Is it just my impression or is there more muslims in Spain?” she wrote on November 22, 2020. “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.”
In 2020, following George Floyd’s death at the hands of the police, Gascón tweeted: “I think 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. They’re all wrong.”
She also went after the Academy Awards. Commenting on the 2021 ceremony, in which Nomadland, Judas and the Black Messiah and Minari were among the big winners, 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.”
While Gascón apologized 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”, she also said that many of the now-deleted tweets circulating online were false and she didn’t recognize ever writing them. Time will tell if the maelstrom will really hurt not just her but Emilia Pérez’s chance at the Oscars next month. With 13 nominations, the film is the frontrunner for this year’s most coveted film awards.