Karla Sofía Gascón, the lead actor in the film “Emilia Pérez,” is resisting calls to withdraw her historic Oscar nomination in the face of backlash over a slew of controversial and bigoted social media posts.
Gascón, the first openly transgender person to have received a nomination in an acting category at the Oscars, told CNN’s Juan Carlos Arciniegas in an interview that her past racist, antisemitic and xenophobic social media posts were essentially harmless.
“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,” Gascón, who was nominated for lead actress, told Arciniegas.
On Jan, 30, journalist Sarah Hagi shed light on several of her posts on X, formerly Twitter, prompting others to do more digging.
In various posts previously translated from Spanish to English by HuffPost, Gascón, who was born in Spain, defended Adolf Hitler, claimed that police murder victim George Floyd was “a drug addict and a scammer,” and claimed that the Muslim religion is “INCOMPATIBLE with Western values.”
She also critiqued the diversity of the 2021 Oscars — in which Daniel Kaluuya, who is Black, and Youn Yuh-jung, who is South Korean, won awards — as an “Afro-Korean festival.”
“More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films,” Gascón said, according to a translation from Variety. “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.”
Shortly after her posts resurfaced, Gascón deactivated her X profile.
Gascón apologized in a Netflix statement: “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,” she added. “I believe light will always triumph over darkness.”
A day later, Gascón released a much longer exclusive statement to The Hollywood Reporter, announcing that she was closing her X account because of threats she received as a result of her resurfaced posts.
“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,” Gascón said. “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.”
Gascón, the first openly transgender person to have received a nomination in an acting category at the Oscars, told CNN’s Juan Carlos Arciniegas in an interview that her past racist, antisemitic and xenophobic social media posts were essentially harmless.
“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,” Gascón, who was nominated for lead actress, told Arciniegas.
On Jan, 30, journalist Sarah Hagi shed light on several of her posts on X, formerly Twitter, prompting others to do more digging.
In various posts previously translated from Spanish to English by HuffPost, Gascón, who was born in Spain, defended Adolf Hitler, claimed that police murder victim George Floyd was “a drug addict and a scammer,” and claimed that the Muslim religion is “INCOMPATIBLE with Western values.”
She also critiqued the diversity of the 2021 Oscars — in which Daniel Kaluuya, who is Black, and Youn Yuh-jung, who is South Korean, won awards — as an “Afro-Korean festival.”
“More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films,” Gascón said, according to a translation from Variety. “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.”
Shortly after her posts resurfaced, Gascón deactivated her X profile.
Gascón apologized in a Netflix statement: “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,” she added. “I believe light will always triumph over darkness.”
A day later, Gascón released a much longer exclusive statement to The Hollywood Reporter, announcing that she was closing her X account because of threats she received as a result of her resurfaced posts.
“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,” Gascón said. “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.”
