Netflix Exec Addresses ‘Emilia Pérez’ Karla Sofía Gascón Scandal

Netflix has finally decided to address the Emilia Pérez controversy that lowered its chances of winning big at the Academy Awards. While the director and performers in the film have shared their views about the social media debacle of co-star Karla Sofía Gascón, the streamer had stayed silent throughout the scandal. However, Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria has now addressed the situation, and apparently, some changes will be made for future casting processes.

Emilia Pérez is a musical crime film starring Gascón alongside Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Mark Ivanir and Édgar Ramírez. It’s written and directed by Jacques Audiard from the novel Écoute by Boris Razon. The movie won the Jury Prize and the Best Actress (for its female cast) awards at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. Gascón’s performance quickly made her a potential frontrunner for the award season.

When the nominations were announced, the film, as well as Gascón, made Oscar history. Emilia Pérez became the most nominated non-English language film at the Oscars, as it earned 13 nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. Gascón became the first transgender woman to be recognized in the category of Best Actress.

However, days later, someone decided to do a little bit of digging into Gascón’s past in the wasteland of social media, and out came a monster. As it turns out, the actor has a bit of a history with highly controversial social media posts that show a racist and xenophobic side. Since then, the backlash caused Gascón to lie low, deactivate her X account, and offer several apologies. Amid the award season, Netflix and some co-stars have decided not to support the actor, and now Gascón remains silent.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Netflix executive spoke about the Emilia Pérez scandal during an interview for the podcast The Town. At first, she tries to do some damage control by giving a shoutout to those who worked in the film and made it a potential winner at the Academy Awards:

“I think it’s really a bummer for the 100 incredibly talented people who made an amazing movie. And if you look at the nominations, and all of this awards love that it’s received, I think it’s such a bummer that it distracted from that. It really has kind of taken the conversation in a different way [from] this incredible movie that Jacques Audiard — who is an incredible director — has made. It really is a bummer for a lot of the people, like [co-stars] Zoe [Saldaña] and Selena [Gomez]. And in our awards team did an incredible campaign for that movie.”

Bajaria also spoke about how Netflix could avoid these kinds of surprises in the future by a “social media vetting process.” Basically, she has shared that the controversy has made the streamer “reevaluate” the process of digging up a star’s social media activity: “It’s not really common practice for people to vet social tweets that way… A lot of people are reevaluating that… I do think it is raising questions for a lot of people about reevaluating that process.” She continued with the following:

“I think you also have to [ask]: ‘Are we going to actually look at the personal social media of tens of thousands of people, every single day around the world, [given the] amount of original film and TV and co-prods that we make and license?’ It raises a lot of questions about what that should look like.

If you ask me today, everything I know, we would still buy the movie today. That movie is incredible and it’s creative and it’s bold — that’s what you want, and it resonated with a lot of people this year.”

Does ‘Emilia Pérez’ Still Have a Shot at the Academy Awards?

Emilia Pérez became a synonym of controversy since the title started being mentioned on the award circuit. Before Gascón’s social media posts surfaced, the film had been slammed by many people as a poor approach to its subject matter. Others celebrated the bold decision to make a musical out of its story and called it a modern masterpiece. If you access social media, then you’re aware that it has become a source of memes, and it has also sparked some discussions about the depiction of Latino and transgender culture.

Karla Sofía Gascón Hopes Her “Silence” Will Help ‘Emilia Pérez’ Be “Appreciated for What It Is” in New Apology

This one might be too little, too late.

The film still has a chance to win big at the Oscars. Perhaps Karla Sofía Gascón saw her chances take a hit, but 13 nominations is a lot. It will surely win some Oscars, but the big question is whether the film has a shot in the more important categories. But Gascón for Best Actress? We don’t see The Substance’s Demi Moore losing on that one.