This Oscars Season Is A Mess
And I love mess.
One week ago, I wrote about the Oscar chances of Emilia Pérez, a not-good movie that was being treated like a great one and had a real chance of winning Best Picture. If you didn’t read it, the gist is that Emilia Pérez is a trashy, morally bankrupt soap opera masquerading as a prestige picture; its politics are suspect at best and the acting/directing/plot are somehow even worse than that.
Well, as Rasheed Wallace once said … Ball don’t lie.
What has happened in the last week can only be identified as one of the more insane, hard-to-believe and (frankly) pretty funny twists in recent movie history. The term “cancel culture” is thrown around willy-nilly these days, but it might have rightfully come for Spaniard, Best Actress nominee and bad-opinion-haver Karla Sofía Gascón.
While looking through the trans actress’s old Twitter posts, journalist Sarah Hagi stumbled upon a treasure trove of wild takes whether they be on Islam, George Floyd or even Oscars diversity. It didn’t take much work—just searching some terms and keywords—and Hagi (followed by others—mainly Brazilians) might have knocked Emilia Pérez down from its Best Picture perch. Here are just a few of the wild Gascón tweets:
The Chinese vaccine, apart from the mandatory chip, comes with two spring rolls, a cat that moves its hand, 2 plastic flowers, a pop-up lantern, 3 telephone lines and one euro for your first controlled purchase.
More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films, I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M. Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala.
And this is just a select few. They’re all over the place and frequently somehow worse than you could possibly imagine. It’s a fuck-up of massive proportions, and it’s kind of shocking that Netflix didn’t prep for this at all.
You would think a company that’s constantly gunning for Oscars without ever taking home the biggest one would do a little due diligence and check through one of its lesser-known stars’ background, especially knowing that Emilia Pérez would be a hot-button movie for a whole host of reasons.
To make matters worse, Gascón has been—what the kids call—posting through it, constantly putting her foot more and more in her mouth in what must be one of the most impressive gymnastic acts in recent history. Just recently, she had a full interview with CNN en Español in which she played wounded and hurt without ever really apologizing to anyone with quotes like “I believe I have been judged. I have been convicted and sacrificed and crucified and stoned without a trial and without the option to defend myself.”
Well, Netflix definitely helped her with this. Right? Right? Nope. She just did this on her own fruition.
The thing is that Gascón isn’t just hurting her own campaign; she’s taking everyone else down with her. The movie’s 13 nominations just a week or so ago now feel like decades ago with all of its odds getting worse and worse the more Gascón speaks. For instance, Zoe Saldaña was a near-lock for Best Supporting Actress for what seemed like months and is now in essentially a dead-lock with Ariana Grande. It’s like that across the board.
The original plan for this post was to break down all of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans, from the AI debate regarding The Brutalist to the intimacy coordinator hubbub over Anora to the I’m Still Here jockeying, but all of that has been eclipsed by the Emilia Pérez freefall.
Things have gotten so bad that The Hollywood Reporter just dropped a story stating that the Netflix movie’s lead actress has been essentially dropped from its campaigning: How Emilia Pérez Is Being Removed from the ‘Emilia Pérez’ Oscar Campaign.
Tensions are said to be high between Gascón and the streamer, which has invested millions in the film’s awards push. It was flourishing as recently as Jan. 23, when the film received a field-leading 13 Oscar nominations, just one shy of the all-time record. But now, at the most inopportune moment, it is on life support thanks to the Gascón revelations.
The two parties are now said to be communicating only through Gascón’s agent, Jeremy Barber of UTA. And it is my understanding that there is no great interest on the part of Netflix to provide the usual courtesies afforded by a studio to an Oscar contender, such as transportation and accommodations, to facilitate her attendance at the remaining awards season gatherings.
The streamer is not the only party interested in distancing itself from Gascón. THR has learned that others who were to have attended some of the aforementioned events alongside the actress, such as the Santa Barbara Film Festival event, had indicated that they might have to cancel their participation if she did not cancel hers, out of concern that things could get very uncomfortable with her there.
Usually, online chaos like this surrounding Best Picture nominees doesn’t do much to change voting—look at Green Book, Brendan Fraser in The Whale, Bohemian Rhapsody’s editing and many, many other wins—but the timing of these reports (right before voting), the depravity of what’s come to light and the fact that the movie was running with a vote for justice campaign might actually sway enough voters to change many of the big awards. It’s a real mess and opens up Oscar Night for even more out-of-nowhere surprises.
It’s not like these posts are from a long time ago either—many are from 2023. Sarah Hagi put it best in her interview with Variety:
Some might argue that digging up old tweets is an example of “cancel culture” looking to “cancel” the next person.
I entirely disregard those people intellectually on every level. These tweets existed from 2016 to 2023, which I found based on the words I searched. Who knows what else is out there? More tweets have surfaced since.
She had every opportunity to ensure these wouldn’t exist online anymore. Hundreds of thousands of dollars go into an awards campaign — this isn’t some random person who stumbled into the spotlight. This was a calculated effort from a major studio. They should have deleted them if they didn’t want people to find these tweets. I just happened to be the one who searched. It could have been anyone. And yet, with a single word search, I found some of the most jaw-droppingly racist tweets.
What would you say directly to Gascon?
Nothing. She’s just another racist.