Reporter’s notebook: Karla Sofía Gascón won’t go silent amid ongoing PR calamity
As anyone following Oscar intrigue knows by now, Emilia Pérez star and Best Actress nominee Karla Sofía Gascón has punctured the film’s awards narrative in an unprecedented way. Gascón’s years-old tweets resurfaced last week, revealing inexcusable hate speech, including Islamophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, and body-shaming remarks.
Gascón, the first openly trans actress to receive an Academy Award acting nomination, finally deleted her X account, but not before the egregious comments were well documented. Over the past week, she botched multiple attempts at a proper apology, instead offering a series of self-aggrandizing explanations, denials, defenses, and attacks proclaiming her innocence and victimization. The latest came with her figuring out a way to blame “cancel culture” for her woes in a Tuesday post on Instagram alluding to the controversy.
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Playing the victim is never pretty, mainly when it happens in service to something inherently indefensible. The damage to Gascón’s reputation and her film could have been minimized simply by following the Crisis PR 101 playbook: give a brief mea culpa and then go dark.
Here is the only statement Gascón needed to release last week via Netflix, the studio behind Emilia Pérez: “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.”
Boom. Done.
Instead of damage control, Gascón has been busily inflicting damage — while Emilia Pérez‘s dozen other Oscar hopefuls and Netflix (still dreaming of that elusive Best Picture statuette) have watched in horror as their golden dreams are in jeopardy. The Gold Derby odds in several categories are in free fall. Even Zoe Salda?a, considered a lock for Best Supporting Actress, can’t distance herself fast enough.
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Netflix has finally seemed to mostly reestablish control of the situation, perhaps just in time. The actress has been scrubbed from the Emilia Pérez awards campaign. Netflix’s latest For Your Consideration ad doesn’t mention Gascón. The film’s Instagram focuses almost exclusively on Salda?a — it’s virtually impossible to tell that the character Emilia Pérez was in the movie Emilia Pérez. And plans for Gascón to attend the upcoming Critics Choice Awards, Producers Guild Awards, AFI Awards luncheon, and Santa Barbara International Film Festival (where she was to be honored with the Virtuoso Award) have all been scuttled.
A week away from the start of Oscar voting and a month out from the ceremony, Gascón is said to be holed up in her native Spain. The Netflix team no doubt hopes she stays there; the streamer and its awards staffers are in the awful and awkward position of having to treat one of its nominees as persona non grata. Meanwhile, the Motion Picture Academy must grapple with presenting Gascón and her historic nomination at the Oscars. Will she have a presence in the Emilia Pérez montage? How will the audience react when her name is read aloud during the Best Actress presentation?
It’s way too late to save her candidacy. The Gold Derby odds predict Demi Moore (The Substance) will win in the Best Actress Oscar race, with Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here) in the spoiler slot. Rounding out the category are Mikey Madison (Anora) in third, Cynthia Erivo (Wicked) in fourth, and Gascón in fifth. Even without this scandal, she was a long shot.
We’re sure the Academy and Netflix would love for Gascón to renounce her nomination, but that seems unlikely. So, we wind up with the bizarre scenario in which the film distributor renounces it for her, pretending she doesn’t exist and making Salda?a the face of the campaign. At this point, Netflix hopes to snatch a few victories from the jaws of agonizing defeat.
Fortunately for Netflix and Emilia Pérez, they will be saved the embarrassment of having Gascón face a “Fab 5” moment from the stage where five past winners offer a laudatory introduction the nominees in each acting category. While the popular format pioneered a year ago is being brought back, Gold Derby has learned the presentation will be reserved for non-acting categories this time — which evidently was always going to be the case even before the Gascón situation blew up. One bullet dodged.
As for Gascón, she expressed a desire “to move forward with my new life” on Tuesday. To do that, she ultimately needs to see the light and take responsibility for her words. Accountability doesn’t show weakness but strength. But it all starts with being honest with oneself. Minus that, you can never be honest with anyone else. Also, silence is golden — and, in the case of the actress, distressingly nonexistent.
Here is one last undeniable fact: if you’re a contender with an active life on social media, you better make sure to be thoroughly vetted before launching a campaign—because if you’ve got any skeletons residing in that closet, someone’s going to bring them into the light. That’s a lesson Netflix is having to learn the hard way.
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