Karla Sofia Gascon, the Oscar-nominated star of Emilia Perez, fought back tears during an emotional interview as she addressed the controversy surrounding resurfaced social media posts. The 52-year-old actress, nominated for Best Actress for her role as a transgender crime boss in the Netflix musical, has faced intense backlash following offensive tweets she made over the past five years. The posts, which included remarks about George Floyd, Islam, and diversity at the Oscars, have quickly overshadowed her awards campaign, leading to a wave of criticism.
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Gascon broke down in tears while addressing racism backlash
Gascon insisted that she is not “a racist” in her hour-long interview with CNN es Espanol as she cried and addressed her controversial social media history. Talking to interviewer Juan Carlos Arciniegas, the actor was asked if she would renounce her Oscar nomination, first-ever awarded to an openly transgender actor. She said, “I cannot renounce a nomination because what I have done is a job and what is being valued is my acting work,” as translated by The Hollywood Reporter.
Gascon continued, “I cannot step down from an Oscar nomination because I have not committed any crime nor have I harmed anyone. I am neither racist nor anything that all these people have tried to make others believe I am.” She addressed her tweet about George Floyd who was murdered by a white police officer in 2020 and led to Black Lives Matter. She called Floyd a “drug addict and a hustler,” and wrote, “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 said that her now-deleted tweet was misinterpreted as she told the media outlet, “He was a person who had been in a very difficult situation in his life and no one had helped him, and suddenly he becomes a symbol of a cause and everyone loved him.” She added, “But for someone to think that … I have ever insulted a person because of their skin colour, I do not allow that to anyone, to anyone.”
Gascon addresses her other controversial tweets
In response to the backlash over tweets condemned as Islamophobic, Gascon explained that she was expressing criticism of radical Islam and never intended to harm anyone. She shared about her relationship with a Muslim woman “whom I adore, whom I love and who has taught me so much about respect for people.”
She continued, “What have I done in my life? What have I done? I haven’t killed a single fly. When I have a spider in my house I put a little glass on it so as not to kill it and take it out to the street,” as per the translation by Deadline.
Gascon offered her “most sincere apologies to all the people who may have felt offended for the way I express myself in my past, in my present and in my future,” adding, “I believe I have been judged, I have been convicted and sacrificed and crucified and stoned without a trial and without the option to defend myself.”
While many of the tweets circulating on social media are real, some are fake such as teh one post where she described her co-star Selena Gomes as a “rich rat.” About the tweet, Gascon said, “It’s not mine, of course. I have never said anything about my colleague I would never refer to her that way.”
She claimed that people “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 recognise that I wrote them. And they put them all together and so it seems that she is a very bad person and we remove her [from the Oscar race] just when we can do the most damage, right in the voting period.”
The actor added that she “doesn’t give a damn about awards.” She continued, “What I do care about is the people that I represent, because of what I represent in this world. We can all change and be better people in this world.” The interview took place without any involvement of Netflic who distributed the film, Emilia Perez.
