Unpacking the Emilia Pérez Controversies: Inside the 13-Time Oscar Nominee's Shrinking Best Picture Odds - E! Online

The future was bright for Spanish-language musical Emilia Pérez after big Golden Globe wins and 13 Oscar nominations. Then star Karla Sofía Gascón's old tweets resurfaced and its fortunes plummeted.

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Watch : ‘Emilia Pérez’: Unpacking the Karla Sofía Gascón Controversy

Where to begin with the implosion of Emilia Pérez's Oscar prospects?

Though Golden Globe and SAG Award winner Zoe Saldaña remains on track to take home the Best Supporting Actress Oscar at the 97th Academy Awards on March 2, and many prognosticators still have the Spanish-language musical from France (more on that in a bit) winning Best International Feature Film, the outlook for Emilia Pérez's chances of being named Best Picture has grown increasingly bleak.

Not unlike in politics, Oscar front-runners often take hits en route to victory—spearheaded these days by social media—and Emilia Pérez's field-leading 13 nominations certainly put it in the crosshairs.

But in an awards season awash in controversies—The Brutalist used AI to polish Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones' Hungarian dialogue, Best Actress nominee Fernanda Torres apologized for wearing blackface in a 2008 comedy sketch, the stars of Anora passed on using an intimacy coordinator and intimacy coordinators think that sets a bad precedent—Emilia Pérez has provided most of the scandal fodder.

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Selena Gomez Breaks Silence on Emilia Pérez Controversy 

And the fact that the movie's star, history-making Best Actress nominee Karla Sofía Gascón, had to signal that she would attend the ceremony at Hollywood's Dolby Theatre despite...everything...is evidence enough that this Oscar campaign is limping to the finish line.

Courtesy of Netflix

But where, exactly, did the Netflix film's fortunes take such a drastic turn after its auspicious debut last May at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and stars Gascón, Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz, in a festival first, were all named Best Actress?

"The reactions have changed," director Jacques Audiard acknowledged in an interview with Deadline published Feb. 5. "The reactions now are not the reactions that we were having earlier."

That can be attributed to a litany of reasons, though some more than others:

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Is Emilia Pérez a Good Movie?

As critics point out year after year around this time, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doesn't always choose to reward the best movies—let alone the biggest box office hits or fan favorites—at the Oscars.

And Emilia Pérez, early accolades aside, had audiences singing all sorts of different tunes from the beginning. 

While it's certified a decent 72 percent fresh on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, its Popcornmeter (aka what audiences' think) sits at 16 percent. (Though it’s unclear how much that number has dipped post-controversy.)

Still, when the film came out in November 2024, the pop culture takes were initially positive. The story about a ruthless cartel boss who fakes death and undergoes gender reassignment surgery (joyfully and graphically sung about in the fantastical genre-defying musical) was creative, bold and starred transgender actress Karla Sofía Gascón at a time when trans rights are increasingly under attack around the world.

But the takes soured for a variety of reasons.

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The Spanish-language film, despite being set in Mexico, was shot primarily in France, the country that will claim victory should Emilia Pérez win the Best International Feature Film Oscar.

The film’s French director Jacques Audiard, who also adapted the screenplay from an opera libretto he wrote (itself loosely based on a chapter of the 2018 novel Ecoute), has admitted that he didn’t do a whole lot of research on the country. Moreover, while Adriana Paz is from Mexico City and Selena Gomez is Mexican-American, most of the film’s stars are not of Mexican heritage: Zoe Saldaña is of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent, Gascón is from Spain and Edgar Ramirez is Venezuelan.

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Armchair critics were eager to knock Gomez’s Spanish-speaking, as well.

The star gracefully responded on Instagram, “I did the best I could with the time I was given. Doesn’t take away from how much work and heart I put into this movie.”

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The depiction of notoriously ruthless narco-culture also got a big thumbs down from some Mexican audiences, who didn’t welcome the musical’s take on this tragic aspect of the country’s ongoing sociopolitical reality.

Gascón’s titular character—who in the film has transitioned to leave the life of murderous drug lord Juan "Manitas" Del Monte behind—has been criticized, as well, as playing into the harmful old Hollywood trope of trans people being villains, killers or otherwise mentally unstable. Back in November, GLAAD called it a “profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman” and “a step backward.”

“At the end you’re left with no clear message about los narcos, about the trans issue, about the disappeared…just a superficial look at all of these matters,” psychology student Areli Vázquez, 24, told the Los Angeles Times after the film’s January release in Mexico. Added retired school teacher Carmela Espinoza, 67, “It was offensive and made fun of Mexicans.”

LA Times columnist Gustavo Arellano wrote in a Jan. 23 column, “Audiard reduces Mexico City, one of the world’s great cities, to a bunch of interiors and taco stalls—unsurprisingly, since he shot his movie mostly on sound stages in France. I can also see why GLAAD is so upset at the French director for turning a decision as personal as transitioning into a segment straight out of the late, great television show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, complete with bandaged patients shouting ‘Vaginoplasty!’ and ‘Penoplasty!’”

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Audiard had previously addressed the criticism, telling CNN en Espanol in a Jan. 15 interview, “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.”

Gascón, however, challenged the film’s critics to go make their own movie. “Being LGBTQ, having those labels, does not remove your stupidity, just like heterosexuality does not remove your stupidity,” she told Vanity Fair in December. “What bothers me is that the people that say things like that [are] just sitting down at home doing nothing…Go create the representation you want to see for your community.”

Meanwhile, none of the above prevented the movie from racking up accolades, including a field-leading 13 Oscar nominations.

"What shocked me is that either people haven’t seen the film properly, or they haven’t seen it at all and are acting in bad faith," Audiard told Deadline in an interview published Feb. 5. "The representation of the cartels in the film is thematic. It’s not something that I’m particularly focused on in the film. There’s one scene that deals with it."

Opera, he emphasized, requires strong stylization. "It seems I’m being attacked in the court of realism," he said. "Well, I’ve never claimed that I wanted to make a realistic work."

If he had a regret, Audiard noted, it was that they didn't film in Mexico, but funding options were simply better in France.

Phil McCarten/CBS via Getty Images

The First Karla Sofía Gascón Controversy

Swept aside in the chaos of what came next, Gascón first raised eyebrows with a Jan. 21 video interview she gave to Brazil’s Folha de S. Paulo newspaper in which she slammed orchestrated online campaigns coming for Emilia Pérez—and seemingly accused supporters of fellow Best Actress contender Fernanda Torres of being behind one of them.

“What I don’t like are social media teams—people who work with these people—trying to diminish our work, like me and my movie, because that doesn’t lead anywhere,” Gascón said (per a translation from her native Spanish). “You don’t need to tear down someone’s work to highlight another’s. I have never, at any point, said anything bad about Fernanda Torres or her movie. However, there are people working with Fernanda Torres tearing me and Emilia Pérez down. That speaks more about their movie than mine.”

The 2025 Oscar nominations were announced Jan. 23 and both Gascón and I’m Still Here star Torres are vying for Best Actress along with The Substance’s Demi Moore, Anora’s Mikey Madison and Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo.

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for W Magazine

According to Academy conduct guidelines, Gascón's comments about alleged behind-the-scenes scheming didn’t break any rules. Criticizing her fellow actress’ performance in I’m Still Here or the film itself would have been a violation.

Still, Gascón clarified what she meant, telling Variety in a Jan. 29 statement, “I am an enormous fan of Fernanda Torres and it has been wonderful getting to know her the past few months. In my recent comments, I was referencing the toxicity and violent hate speech on social media that I sadly continue to experience. Fernanda has been a wonderful ally, and no one directly associated with her has been anything but supportive and hugely generous.”

FYI: Academy members had to get their 2025 Oscar nomination votes in by Jan. 19 (after multiple postponements due to the L.A.-area wildfires). The deadline for voting for the winners, though, was Feb. 18.

Sonja Flemming/CBS via Getty Images

Karla Sofía Gascón's Offensive Tweets Surface

When Emilia Pérez won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, in January, Gascón spoke in support of marginalized groups.

"The light always wins over darkness," said Gascón, who was also the first trans actress to be nominated for a Golden Globe (and lost to Torres). "You can maybe put us in jail, you can beat us up, but you never can take away our soul, or our resistance, or our dignity."

"Raise your voice," the 52-year-old continued. "I am who I am. Know who you [are]."

With that powerful missive, Gascón seemed like the ideal candidate to buoy Emilia Pérez’s fortunes as Oscar voting got underway. Instead, a week after she made more history as the first openly trans person to be nominated for an acting Oscar, her own online history came back to bite her.

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On Jan. 30, Canadian writer Sarah Hagi posted a number of screengrabs of years-old tweets purportedly from Gascón, 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…” (The tweets were in Spanish and Hagi posted English translations alongside them.)

They included tweets (back when the site was still Twitter) saying disparaging things about murder victim George Floyd, another suggesting that Islam should be banned, and others criticizing Muslims’ lack of assimilation in her native Spain.

Gascón also, incidentally, slammed the Oscars in 2021, tweeting, “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 deactivated her X account and apologized in a statement released by Netflix: “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.”

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Karla Sofía Gascón Seemingly Goes Rogue

But Gascón didn't stop at her Netflix-sanctioned statement.

“I’m sorry, but 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 shared Jan. 31 in a subsequent statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “I have been threatened with death, insulted, abused and harassed to the point of exhaustion. I have a wonderful daughter to protect, whom I love madly and who supports me in everything.”

She had always used social media “as a diary, reflections or notes,” she continued, “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.”

Gascón wrote that she had always defended “each and every one of the minorities in this world” and opposed oppression. “Perhaps my words are not correct, many times due to ignorance or pure mistake,” she noted. “I apologize again if anyone has ever felt offended or in the future.”

She also insinuated that the resurfacing of her tweets was purposeful, as her success “seems to bother a lot of people in this world.”

Gascón added, “It is clear that there is something very dark behind it. But I tell you something: ‘The more you try to sink me, the stronger it will make me. The greater the victory will be.’”

Vivien Killilea/Variety via Getty Images

Did Karla Sofía Gascón Really Weigh in on Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber Gossip?

Gascón denied ever calling Gomez a “rich rat” in a tweet, disavowing another image that made the rounds online that purported to show that Gascón had weighed in on a story debunking rumors of a feud between Gomez and Hailey Bieber.

"It's not mine, of course," Gascón told CNN en Español in a Feb. 2 interview.  "I've never said anything about my costar, I would never refer to her like that."

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What Have Netflix and Karla Sofía Gascón’s Costars Said About Her Tweets?

“I do not support any negative rhetoric of racism and bigotry towards any group of people,” Saldaña said on Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast. “That is what I want to stand for.”

But she couldn’t help feeling “sad” that Gascón’s tweets were overshadowing the film.

“Time and time again, that’s the word because that is the sentiment that has been living in my chest since everything happened,” Saldaña 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.”

The Avatar star was still allowing herself to “experience that joy because we did come together as a team,” she noted. “But we are also individuals who are responsible for everything that we say and everything that we do.”

Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images for Santa Barbara International Film Festival

Gomez said at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival—where she and an absent Gascón were recipients of the Virtuosos Award—that “some of the magic has disappeared” since the film’s release.

“But I choose to continue to be proud of what I’ve done, and I’m just grateful,” she said during a Feb. 9 panel discussion. “I live with no regrets and I would do this movie over and over again if I could.”

Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria, on the Feb. 13 episode of The Town, called the distraction caused by Gascón ’s tweets “really a bummer for a hundred very incredibly talented people who made an amazing movies.”

Defending the streamer from criticism that they didn’t vet the talent enough before putting Gascón front and center, Bajaria said their awards team “did an incredible campaign for that movie.” She knew of many in the business who were “reevaluating” that process when it comes to personal social media accounts.

But in the meantime, Bajaria added, “If you asked me today, with everything I know, we would still buy the movie today… That movie is incredible.”

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Audiard, however, did not hide his disappointment in a Feb. 5 interview with Deadline.

"It’s very hard for me to think back to the work I did with Karla Sofía," he said. "The trust we shared, the exceptional atmosphere that we had on the set that was indeed based on trust. And when you have that kind of relationship and suddenly you read something that that person has said, things that are absolutely hateful and worthy of being hated, of course that relationship is affected. It's as if you fall into a hole. Because what Karla Sofía said is inexcusable."

He hadn't talked to her since the scandal erupted, he said, nor did he care to.

"She is in a self-destructive approach that I can’t interfere in," Audiard said of her seeming ongoing defensiveness, "and I really don’t understand why she’s continuing." 

She wasn't just doing herself no favors, he added. "I’m thinking in this thing 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 and Selena. I just don’t understand why she’s continuing to harm us. I’m not getting in touch with her because right now she needs space to reflect and take accountability for her actions."

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What Will Emilia Pérez's Fate Be at the 2025 Oscars?

Needless to say, Gascón's run as an awards-season darling reached a premature end, and she ended up skipping the Critics Choice Awards, BAFTAs and SAG Awards.

But she did attend France's César Awards on Feb. 25 and she is planning to attend the Oscars on March 2, according to CNN (though it’s unclear if she’ll stop for red carpet interviews).

Negative press aside, Saldaña remains the favorite to win Best Supporting Actress. Emilia Pérez could also still pull off Best International Feature, as it did at the Golden Globes and BAFTAs on Feb. 16, as well as possibly Best Original Song, seeing as it's nominated for both "El Mal" and "Mi Camino."

And should those be the only three of its 13 nominations that translate into wins, it’s doing better than some: Martin Scorsese alone has directed three movies that went 0-for-10. (In the three-for-13 club, it would join The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.)

Meanwhile, the race for Best Picture has become intriguing regardless, with Anora winning the equivalent honor at the Producers Guild of America Awards Feb. 8, and Conclave winning Best Film at the BAFTAs and Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture at the SAG Awards Feb. 23.

The Brutalist’s win for Outstanding Motion Picture, Drama, at the Golden Globes—let alone Emilia Pérez’s triumph in the musical or comedy category—seems so long ago.

The 2025 Academy Awards air Sunday, Mar. 2, at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT on ABC and Hulu.

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