Emilia Pérez Director Addresses Scandal Surrounding 'Indefensible' Karla Sofía Gascón Posts

Emilia Pérez director Jacques Audiard has responded to the controversy surrounding the film’s lead performer, Karla Sofía Gascón, after years-old posts of hers on social media were unearthed.

Last week, offensive posts from the Oscar nominee criticising subjects like Islam, the Black Lives Matter movement (including, specifically, George Floyd, a Black man murdered by a white police officer in 2020) and diversity at the Academy Awards were discovered and began doing the rounds online.

While Karla Sofía initially issued an apology, and subsequently deleted her X account, she later gave an interview to CNN in which she said she was a victim of “cancel culture”.

Since then, it was widely reported that the Spanish actor had been dropped from Netflix’s Oscars campaign for the polarising movie musical, with the film’s director admitting he feels “very sad” about the scandal becoming such a prominent part of the conversation around Emilia Pérez.

“It’s very hard for me to think back to the work I did with Karla Sofía. The trust we shared, the exceptional atmosphere that we had on the set that was indeed based on trust,” Jacques told Deadline.

“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.”

The French filmmaker continued: “I haven’t spoken to her, and I don’t want to.

“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.

“I’m thinking in this thing of how hurting others, 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 [Saldaña] and Selena [Gomez]. I just don’t understand why she’s continuing to harm us.”

Karla Sofía told CNN that she would not rescind her Oscar nomination because she is “neither racist nor anything that all these people have tried to make others believe I am”.

Variety has cited undisclosed “sources” who claimed that Netflix will no longer foot the bill for Karla Sofía to attend events for the rest of awards season, including the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Baftas and, of course, the Oscars.