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“Emilia Peréz” director Jacques Audiard has spoken out about the star of his film, Karla Sofía Gascón, amid the implosion of her Oscar campaign after racist and controversial tweets resurfaced.
Audiard in an interview with Deadline said not only has he not recently spoken with Gascón, he doesn’t want to, and called her recent behavior in light of the controversy “self-destructive.”
“I haven’t spoken to her, and I don’t want to,” Audiard said. “She is in a self-destructive approach that I can’t interfere in, and I really don’t understand why she’s continuing. Why is she harming herself? Why? I don’t understand it, and what I don’t understand about this too is why she’s harming people who were very close to her.”
Audiard described the trust he built with his actors on set and said that a relationship is naturally affected when one discovers that someone close to you naturally says something “absolutely hateful” and “inexcusable.”
“I’m thinking in this thing of how [she’s] hurting others, of how she’s hurting the crew and all these people who worked so incredibly hard on this film,” Audiard said. “I’m thinking of myself, I’m thinking of Zoe [Saldaña] and Selena [Gomez]. 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.”
Gascón’s tweets from 2020 and 2021 about topics such as George Floyd, Muslims, and the Covid-19 pandemic went viral at the end of the January, effectively torpedoing her Oscar campaign for Best Actress. Her actions since have threatened to torpedo the whole film, with Best Supporting Actress frontrunner Zoe Saldaña disavowing Gascón’s comments, and Netflix reportedly distancing itself from her, including no longer inviting her to other award season festivities and removing her image from FYC promotional material for the film.
Gascón has however been continuing to put out statements and do press as damage control — reportedly, beyond the purview of Netflix and her PR team. She appeared in a Spanish language interview with CNN and posted a lengthy statement to Instagram saying she is not racist.
Audiard specifically saw her latest defenses as though she was playing the victim.
“She’s really playing the victim,” he said. “She’s talking about herself as a victim, which is surprising. It’s as if she thought that words don’t hurt.”
In her initial statement to IndieWire back on Jan. 30, Gascón said, “I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt. 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.”
“Emilia Pérez” is not without detractors even beyond Gascón’s drama. The film has been criticized by Latinos, and Audiard took the time to respond to those criticisms as well, wondering if people haven’t actually seen the film or are arguing in bad faith, and that he was more concerned with making an opera than a hyper realistic depiction of Mexico.
“It seems I’m being attacked in the court of realism. Well, I’ve never claimed that I wanted to make a realistic work,” Audiard said. “If I wanted to make a work that was particularly documented, then I would do a documentary, but then there would be no singing and dancing. For example, I read a review where it said that night markets in Mexico City don’t have photocopiers. Well, in night markets in Mexico City, one also doesn’t sing and dance. You have to accept that is part of the magic here. This is an opera, not a criticism of anything about Mexico.”
Read Audiard’s full interview here.
English (US) ·