Karla Sofia Gascon will go to the Hollywood Oscars

Spanish actress Karla Sofía Gascón (Alcobendas, Madrid, 52 years old) will be at the Oscars gala that will be held next Sunday, March 2. Nominated for the award for best leading actress, these are —with permission from the Golden Globes, held on January 5— the only awards of the season that she will attend, since until now she had been kept out of Hollywood due to a series of old messages on social networks. This has been confirmed by the specialized media Variety , which assures that the details of her appearance are still being finalized. In addition, they also affirm that she will attend the French César Awards, which will be held in Paris on Friday 28.

Gascón will arrive in Los Angeles during the weekend before the big party. Netflix is ​​going to pay the (enormous) expenses of her trip and her stay, according to the media, despite the fact that it removed her from the promotion a few weeks ago. It remains to be seen how she will move during these days, when she has been practically a month away from all the promotional events for the film and even from the posters. It is unknown if she will give interviews, if she will attend more promotional events, if she will go to parties, if she will have anyone to dress her, if she will walk on the red carpets, where she will undoubtedly be asked about her explosive messages. The week until the Oscars is going to be unpredictable. However, voting for the awards has been closed since last Tuesday, the 18th.

It was at the end of January when the controversy erupted. With a simple search on his X account, a journalist discovered that Gascón's history included dozens of racist, xenophobic and offensive tweets. They were against different groups: from Islam to the African-American George Floyd , China, Jews, the church and even against the Oscars themselves. Then, Gascón's awards career, especially the Oscars, sank, as did Emilia Pérez 's , who beyond those of her co-star, Zoe Saldaña, has barely lifted any statuettes this season.

Gascón apologized for those tweets, but also said that she had not “committed any crime” and that she would not, under any circumstances, renounce the nomination, as well as saying that she felt abandoned and that there was “something very dark” behind those messages. “They have left me very alone,” she told this newspaper. She also said that many of those tweets were “sarcastic, taken out of context and part of a thread.” However, her half-hearted apologies did not end up taking hold.

Her cast did not support her. Saldaña and Selena Gomez referred to the matter in different interviews and events, but without saying her name; Jacques Audiard, on the other hand, was harsher with his protagonist. “I have not spoken to her and I do not want to do so,” said the French director . “When you have that kind of relationship and suddenly you read something that that person has said, things that are absolutely hateful and worthy of being hated, of course that relationship is affected. It is as if you fell into a hole. Because what Karla Sofia said is unforgivable.” Since those harsh statements by the filmmaker —which had its own controversy, saying that Spanish was “a language of emerging countries, a language of modest countries, of poor people and of migrants”— at the beginning of February, Gascón announced that he was going to remain silent , and so he has been, until now.

During the awards season, Gascón has not appeared in Hollywood. Netflix, which bought Emilia Pérez to distribute it in the US, turned off the financial tap ; in addition, Bela Bajaria, the platform's content director, said it was "a shame" that attention had been diverted from the film by this issue. The actress has not attended the awards in Los Angeles , nor the Baftas in London or the Goyas in Madrid. In fact, on the red carpet and at the awards party in her own country she became the central topic of conversation ; even the president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, spoke out on the issue.

Emilia Pérez has become the film not only in Spanish but also in a language other than English that has managed to get the most nominations for an Oscar in history , no less than thirteen. In addition, Gascón is the first openly trans performer, whether male or female, to be nominated for both that major award and many others in the industry. The final verdict of the film industry will be known on March 2.