Karla Sofía Gascón, the trans ‘star’ of award-winning musical Emilia Pérez, currently finds himself in a spot of bother. In a series of unearthed tweets largely posted between 2020 and 2021, Gascón expressed some very un-Hollywood political views. He criticised Muslim immigration into his native Spain, called the late George Floyd a ‘drug-addict swindler’ and said, effectively, that the 2021 Oscars were too woke (‘[I] didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival [or] a Black Lives Matter demonstration… an ugly, ugly gala’).
As a result of these politically incorrect outbursts, the right-on denizens of the movie industry have turned on Gascón. The ‘trailblazing’ actor is now facing calls to withdraw from his nomination for Best Actress in next month’s Oscars – which given that he is a man, he should really never have been nominated for in the first place. Netflix, which produced Emilia Pérez, has tried to remove him from the film’s promotional material – which is pretty difficult, considering that Gascón plays the titular character.
Yet before this scandal broke, Gascón was guilty of something far more insulting than a set of off-colour tweets. That crime was, of course, Emilia Pérez itself.
Critics have fawned over this Netflix musical, and it has been nominated for 13 Oscars. Yet many members of the public are rather less impressed.
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