Karla Sofía Gascón is facing backlash after social media users discovered a trove of controversial tweets about Islam, including one that compared the religion to “a hotbed of infection for inhumanity.”
Gascón, who is nominated for best actress at the upcoming Academy Awards for her role in “Emilia Pérez,” is the first openly trans actor to earn an Oscar nomination. On Jan. 6, she won the Golden Globe for best actress in a musical or comedy. “Emilia Pérez,” a Netflix film, is nominated for 13 Oscars, including Best Picture.
In a series of now-deleted posts shared between 2016 and 2022, Gascón described Islam in Spanish as “incompatible with Western values,” and ”a hotbed of infection for humanity that urgently needs to be cured.”
In a post from 2020, Gascón shared a photo of a Muslim family eating dinner, including a woman wearing a burqa. “How DEEPLY DISGUSTING OF HUMANITY,” her post said. In 2021, she wrote that ”the West should ban Islam.”
Variety reported that in 2021, the year that Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” won Best Picture at the Oscars, Gascón posted, “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.”
Gascón also shared a long thread about George Floyd following Floyd’s murder by a police officer in 2020.
“I really think that very few people ever cared about George Floyd, a drug addict swindler, but his death has served to once again demonstrate that there are people who still consider black people to be monkeys without rights and consider policemen to be assassins,” she wrote. “They’re all wrong.”
Many of the posts have since been deleted. The Star viewed them through a webpage capture site, and translated them independently. Netflix did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The posts were discovered on Thursday by Toronto journalist Sarah Hagi.
“I was shocked that they weren’t deleted,” Hagi told the Star. “Show me any other group of people you could make that many tweets about and not clock it in your mind when you become famous as this needs to be deleted … It feels like a total blind spot.”
“But I think it’s really important to share these, especially since (“Emilia Pérez”) is being touted as this extremely progressive film.”
Irfan Chaudhry, a hate crime researcher in Edmonton, described Gascón’s posts as “hateful and offensive.”
“Islamophobic of frames of reference and anti-Muslim hate are very strong and prevalent in in many societies, including our own,” he told the Star.
Chaudhry said he’s curious how the Academy will respond to the revelations, given the Oscars’ recent promotion of inclusion and diversity.
“You have your first openly trans actress in a starring role being nominated, which is a huge step for inclusion,” said Chaudhry. “But now you have these other hateful views hanging over the heads of people in decision making roles. So I’m going to be curious to see what kind of accountability occurs at that level, if any.”
The movie, directed by Jacques Audiard, tells the story of a fictional Mexican drug trafficker nicknamed Manitas del Monte (Gascón), who leaves behind a life of crime by becoming a transgender woman and activist. But problems arise due to Manitas’ uncontrollable jealousy toward her ex-wife Jessi (Selena Gomez).
“Emilia Pérez”‘s 13 Oscar nominations are a record for a non-English-language film, but it’s faced backlash over its portrayal of Mexico, which critics say glamourizes the violence that has long plagued the country.
“Emilia Pérez” has also faced criticism from the transgender community.
Láurel Miranda, a transgender human rights advocate, told the Associated Press that she had received a casting call for the film looking for “a middle-aged transgender actress with a robust build.” She added, “Because, of course, we trans women always have to be hardy.”
Miranda also questioned the movie’s original script in which Manitas becomes a woman solely to evade justice. Gascón pushed to change the motivation to a woman looking to make her transition.
The 2025 Oscars are on March 2.
— With files from The Associated Press
