Karla Sofía Gascón, The Trans Actress In “Emilia Pérez”, Has Been Exposed For Her Racist Tweets
Karla Sofía Gascón, the first trans actress to be nominated in an Oscar is facing a huge controversy after a journalist exposed hundreds of racist tweets.
Karla Sofía Gascón, the Spanish trans actress nominated for an Oscar for her role in the film “Emilia Pérez”, has caused a huge controversy after a journalist uncovered several of her racist and Islamophobic tweets.
On Jan. 30, journalist Sarah Hagi posted several screenshots of tweets by Gascón from 2016 to 2023, when the actress made Islamophobic remarks and was racist towards multiple minorities.
Hagi said she had started investigating Gascón as part of “hunch” and what she found was “shocking”.
“Islam is becoming an infection for humanity that urgently needs to be cured,” 52-year-old Gascón wrote on X in 2016.
“Islam is wonderful, without any kind of sexism. Women are respected, and when they are respected a lot, they leave a little square on their face,” she wrote. “What a DEEP DISGUSTING HUMANITY.”
Gascón frequently used the word “moros”, or moors in English, which has been used for decades to describe people who practice Islam and those from North Africa, but has come to have derogatory connotations in Spain.
Hagi’s revelations prompted other journalists and people online to further investigate Gascón’s X account.
People found Gascón had described George Floyd, a Black man who was murdered by a white police officer, as a “drug addict and a hustler”.
She also shared racist misinformation on the COVID-19 vaccines, saying, “The Chinese vaccine, aside from the mandatory chip, comes with two spring rolls, a waving cat, two plastic flowers, a collapsible lantern, three phone lines, and one euro for your first controlled purchase.”
Tweets also revealed racist remarks towards Asians.
“I’m so fed up that every time I search for important news on Twitter, I come across 200 posts about those f*cking Chinese BTS members,” Gascón wrote in August 2021.
After her racist behavior was exposed, Gascón deactivated her X account on Thursday, Jan 30, calling it “misinformation”.
“I’m sorry, but I can no longer allow this campaign of hate and misinformation to affect neither my family nor me anymore, so at their request I am closing my account on X,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in a statement.
On Jan. 29, before the tweets were unearthed, Gascón had said during an interview that the social media team of Brazilian actress and Oscar nominee Fernanda Torres was “tearing me and Emilia Pérez down”.
“I can’t fix my past acts, I can only say that today I am not the same person I was 10 or 20 years ago […] I recognize, in between tears, that they have won, they have achieved their objective, to stain my existence with lies or things taken out of context,” she wrote in another post on her Instagram on Feb. 1.
During an exclusive, hour-long interview with CNN, Gascón apologized and defended herself, saying she isn’t the racist person many have made her out to be.
Addressing the George Floyd tweets, Gascón said they were “taken out of context” and “manipulated”, adding that barely any people interacted with her post, so it was impossible for her to have any kind of influence.
She said she often uses “irony” and writes in the “point of view of a third person who thinks negatively”.
She also said the same about a tweet where she wrote, “This is the same as always: ‘Black slaves and the woman in the kitchen’. But this is my opinion and it must be respected. I do not understand so much world war against Hitler, he simply had his opinion of the Jews. The end, that’s how the world goes."
Gascón also said she wouldn’t have worked with Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldaña, two of her co-stars, if she was racist.
Hagi told Variety Gascón didn’t give a proper apology, failing to “address the marginalized group she targeted” and didn’t “acknowledge the harm she caused”.
She has also called for Gascón's Oscar nomination to be rescinded.
“Are you going to tout a movie around as being “important” and “historical” and then have the star of it say the vilest and racist things? This isn’t controversial; it’s blatant racism,” she told Variety.
Gascón is the first trans actress to be nominated in an Oscar acting category for the film “Emilia Pérez”, which is also facing a huge controversy for its stereotypical and superficial representation of people in Mexico.
Netflix, who is in charge of distributing “Emilia Pérez” in the US and Canada, has distanced itself from Gascón, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
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