2 hours ago
1
Karla Sofía Gascón will not attend this weekend’s prestigious Goya awards as the fallout from the Spanish actor’s racist and Islamophobic social media posts continues with her being dropped by her publisher and criticised by prominent politicians.
Gascón – the star of Emilia Pérez and the first transgender woman to be nominated for a best actress Oscar – is already understood to have been removed from the film’s campaigning materials by its studio, Netflix. Her comments have been described as “absolutely hateful” by the movie’s director, Jacques Audiard, while Gascón’s co-star, Zoe Saldana, has said the views expressed had saddened and disappointed her.
On Thursday, Spanish media reported that Gascón – who has apologised for the comments made in old posts on X – would not be attending Saturday’s Goya awards, which are Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars. It also emerged that Dos Bigotes, a publishing house specialising in LGBTQ+, gender and feminist themes, has dropped plans for a revised edition of a biographical novel that Gascón published in Mexico in 2018.
Dos Bigotes said it had told the actor of its decision on Monday, informing her that the sentiments aired in her posts were inconsistent with its commitment to “equality, inclusion and diversity”. However, the publisher said that while it obviously did not share the views Gascón had expressed, it had told her that “we believe that the passage of time, and the lessons that life and time teach us, can make us better”.
The previous day, two prominent leftwing Spanish politicians had weighed in on the controversy.
“I feel bad about Karla Sofía Gascón’s tweets,” said the culture minister, Ernest Urtasun. “They don’t reflect Spanish society, and it pains me to say it, because her [Oscar] candidacy was very important for the country. And those tweets have tarnished that.”
His colleague, the labour minister and deputy prime minister, Yolanda Díaz, was asked about the matter during a radio interview.
“I was absolutely delighted when she was nominated because of the symbolism and the force of what she represents,” she told Cadena Ser. “When I read the tweets, which aren’t tweets but are reflections of what a person thinks, I was deeply upset.”
Although the recently unearthed social media posts – in which Gascón called George Floyd “a drug addict swindler” and said Islam was “becoming a hotbed of infection for humanity” – are thought to have destroyed her Oscar hopes, some have questioned the scale and ferocity of the backlash the actor faces.
In a column in El País on Wednesday, the writer and journalist Sergio del Molino argued that Gascón the actor, and Gascón the person ought to be considered separately, and that she shouldn’t be penalised come Oscar night.
after newsletter promotion
“If the people at the Academy were convinced that Karla Sofía Gascón deserved an Oscar for her work on Emilia Pérez, there’s no reason why they should feel differently today,” he wrote. “No matter how idiotic, racist, insulting or in bad taste her tweets from years ago were, they were not part of her performance. And if they deemed that performance prize-worthy a week ago, they still should, because the film hasn’t changed.”
Another writer and journalist, Manuel Jabois, told Cadena Ser that “anyone who doesn’t feel a bit sorry for her has a problem”, while acknowledging that there was a debate to be had about how to separate Gascón’s “artistic talent from her disgusting and racist” opinions.
“And there’s another debate about how far the rejection, or cancellation – by Netflix, by colleagues, by the government of this country – can go,” said Jabois. “No matter how gross I find her 10-year-old opinions, I condemn the absurd cruelty and the absurd solitude to which she’s been condemned.”
