Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, Karla Sofia Gascón and Adriana Paz have already won one ensemble best actress award for their roles in Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez at Cannes this past May. With the musical drama also selected as the French entry for best international feature at the upcoming Academy Awards, Oscar buzz is swarming ahead of the project’s Nov. 1 theatrical release. But Gomez — who recently received her first acting Emmy nomination for Only Murders in the Building — isn’t getting caught up in the awards chatter.c
“I don’t like to think anything or be presumptuous,” she told The Hollywood Reporter at the red carpet premiere of the film in Los Angeles on Monday. “I’m just going to say I’m so happy people are receiving it the way they are.”
In the film, which will be released on Netflix on Nov. 13, Gomez stars as Jessi, wife to ruthless cartel leader Manitas, who is forced to start her life over when her husband chooses a new life for himself as a woman, going by the name of Emilia Pérez (Gascón). Jessi’s pent-up frustrations pour out in the musical number “Beinvenida,” which the actress said is the scene she performed for her audition.
“I had no idea the concept he was going for. The director, Jacques, literally said to me, ‘Act drunk and throw your shoes if you want and do all this stuff and just go crazy.’ And I was like, ‘Oh? OK,’” she recalled. “I did it once, and he was like, ‘Go crazier.’ And I went totally for it. I was standing on furniture, and I blacked out, but I was just singing my heart out and dancing like a mad woman — I guess a drunk mad woman — and it was a very crazy experience, but I was honored when he decided to ultimately go with me.”
Gomez, a music star in her own right who’s released three solo albums, is no stranger to choreographed singing and acting, having begun her career at just 10 years old. Yet while some of her co-stars were novices to the genre, she insists she didn’t need to offer any advice when it came to helping them perform their musical numbers.
“They didn’t need it. First off, did you see Zoe? That girl does not need any tips. If anything, I need the tips,” Gomez laughed. “Everybody, I thought, was vulnerable, and it was real, and we just did the best that we could, even if it didn’t sound perfect.”
Édgar Ramírez performs a duet with Gomez in the role of Gustavo in the film, an opportunity he said he found more exciting than intimidating. “I had no idea I was going to have a little moment at being like a micro pop star next to Selena,” teased Ramírez. “It was very cute and it was real. It was a real pleasure to work with her. She’s so open, so strong and so fragile, and so vulnerable at the same time. It was really beautiful, and we both felt so safe with each other, and I think that that shows in the film, the trust that we had in each other. It was a beautiful love story in the middle of all this intensity.”
For Saldaña, who stars as Rita, a lawyer whose life becomes entangled in Manitas/Emilia Pérez’s, her biggest obstacle was simply “not getting in my own way and sort of being in Rita’s skin and understanding her journey,” she said. “It takes discipline to not judge a character as you’re approaching it, and you’re putting it together.”
Gascón’s journey to her character required her to learn how to sing onscreen, a task which the trans actress admits she never desired to do before now. “At the end of the day, life puts you in the way of what you need to learn. I didn’t want to learn in my life to dance or to sing, and then life says to you, ‘You don’t like? Wait a moment,'” Gascón said with a laugh. “I had to work for that. But it is amazing because, at the end of our lives, we learn a lot of things. We can’t stop [learning].”
Despite the critical praise she’s received for her musical execution in the film when it comes to taking on similar roles, she joked, “I don’t want to do more musicals. Please, don’t call me to do musicals. I’m sorry.”
While Gascón hasn’t been bit by the musical bug, Ramírez certainly has. “My next movie is a musical film, so I’m very excited,” he revealed.
Saldaña also remains open to the possibility of more films like this. “This is something that is all-encompassing of all the art forms that I love. I’m just happy that I’m finally getting to share more of what I can do, and I will be doing by the grace of God,” she said. Asked whether that means more musical roles, Saldaña replied coyly, “If you insist.”
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