Karla Sofía Gascón, star of Academy Award-nominated film Emilia Pérez, has been caught at the centre of controversy following the resurfacing of her not-so-nice past comments just a few days after her nomination for the Best Actress at this year’s Oscars was announced.
Past tweets from the 52-year-old actress show her making insensitive and tone-deaf comments on China, George Floyd, Islam, and diversity at the Oscars. Gascon has repeatedly apologised for these and participated in several interviews without the assistance of her agency or Netflix.
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Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, both the streaming platform and her PR agency, The Lede Company, have dropped her from the campaign. The Netflix drop means that the streamer will no longer cover Gascón’s travel and accommodation expenses related to promoting the film or for the award ceremonies for which it secured nominations.
As the controversy continues, it seems unlikely that Gascón will win the Oscar for Best Actress, as final voting for the coveted gold statue will take place on February 11. However, the same cannot be said for the Critics Choice Award, which will take place this Friday. Gascón is nominated in the Best Actress category, and voting for the same closed on January 10, weeks before the tweets resurfaced. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Gascón will not be present for the Critics Choice Awards, as well as any other major upcoming award shows.
Gascón’s past tweets
Freelance journalist Sarah Hagi was the first to bring the issues to light when she went digging on Gascón’s social media and found the actress badmouthing Islam on X (formerly Twitter), along with many other sensitive topics. One tweet read: “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. [sic]”
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In another post, she shared a photo of a Musilm family, with the female wearing a burka, sitting at a restaurant, with the caption, “Islam is marvelous, without any machismo. Women are respected, and when they are so respected they are left with a little squared hole on their faces for their eyes to be visible and their mouths, but only if she behaves. Although they dress this way for their own enjoyment. How DEEPLY DISGUSTING OF HUMANITY. [sic]”
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… pic.twitter.com/1rcNzkJXuo
— sarah hagi (@KindaHagi) January 30, 2025
In 2020, she even made comments on George Floyd, an American man unjustly murdered by the police. Her tweet stated: 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. They’re all wrong. [sic]”
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In a tweet about the 2021 Academy Awards, where Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland won Best Picture, she weighed in, “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. [sic]”
Gascón also expressed some racist remarks on China, amid the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. “The Chinese vaccine, apart from the mandatory chip, comes with two spring rolls, a cat that moves its hand, 2 plastic flowers, a pop-up lantern, 3 telephone lines and one euro for your first controlled purchase. [sic]”
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In addition to these racist and Islamophobic tweets, posts criticizing her Emilia Pérez co-star Selena Gomez also resurfaced. “She’s a rich rat who plays the poor bastard whenever she can and will never stop bothering her ex-boyfriend [Justin Bieber] and his wife [Hailey Bieber]. [sic]”
Emilia Pérez at the Oscars
Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez leads the Oscars race with 13 nods, including Best Picture. Gascón is the first openly transgender actor to be nominated for Best Actress in the award show’s history, marking a significant milestone for the Academy.
At the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, Emilia Pérez won the Jury Prize, as well as Best Actress award for the female ensemble – Gascón, Gomez, Zoe Saldaña, and Adriana Paz.
The 97th Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, March 2 at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood.