“Oscar bait” is a term for movies that seem designed to garner awards attention. They’re usually topical, or they promote social justice and progressive values in some way or another. Emilia Pérez is very close to becoming synonymous with that term, attempting a multicultural crime story with major trans representation, led by a cast of strong women. It worked, garnering 13 Oscar nominations at the 97th Academy Awards, but lately, the backlash has been deafening, mostly because of old social media messages from its Oscar-nominated star, Karla Sofía Gascón.
In its own unintentional way, Emilia Pérez is like a cinematic Trojan horse. Oscar voters and many Hollywood liberals saw the keywords of the film, all the little labels, and thought Jacques Audiard’s movie was a forward-thinking film that advanced the cultural cause. Unfortunately, Oscar voters and Hollywood liberals are mostly rich and famous, and as such, mostly cisgender, white, and male, which means that they may be less likely to actually understand the complexities of what they purport to believe in. They see a transgender person in a movie set in Mexico led by women and think: right on! Unfortunately, there’s only a dirty window behind the progressive curtains of Emilia Pérez.
Inside the Trojan horse, the reality of Emilia Pérez is that the trans actor has a history of hateful, bigoted messages on social media; that it has a fundamentally flawed and dangerously misguided understanding of trans identity; that it insults Mexicans in its attempt to co-opt their culture; and that its cast and crew have displayed a complete lack of self-awareness of these things, and an obnoxious arrogance over making such a “revolutionary” and “socially important” film. So let’s explore everything wrong with the movie, and why Oscar voters ate it up.
What Did Karla Sofía Gascón Say That Was So Controversial?
Gascón has been under fire ever since many of her tweets resurfaced, largely thanks to journalist Sarah Hagi. The social media posts shattered all the liberal good will that Gascón had as the first publicly open trans actor to be nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards. They’re pretty ugly to read (and we’ll duplicate them in the way they were written and translated). On Nov. 22, 2020, Gascón wrote on the social media platform, “I’m Sorry, Is it just my impression or is there more muslims in Spain? Every time I go to pick up my daughter from school there are more women with their hair covered and their skirts down to their heels. Next year instead of English we’ll have to teach Arabic.”
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It seems like Muslims were a consistent target of Gascón’s. On Sept. 2, 2020, she posted an image of a Muslim family at a restaurant and sarcastically wrote, “Islam is marvelous, without any machismo. Women are respected, and when they are so respected they are left with a little squared hole on their faces for their eyes to be visible and their mouths, but only if she behaves. Although they dress this way for their own enjoyment. How DEEPLY DISGUSTING OF HUMANITY.” (The emphasis is Gascón’s.) The actress’ bitter bile was directed at many more people, though. In June 2020, Gascón wrote:
“Honestly, I 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 … without rights and consider policemen to be assassins. They’re all wrong.”
Then there’s a Twitter post from August 2020 that combines anti-vaccine sentiment with good ol’ fashioned racism:
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.
Attacking Her Co-Star & Feigning Apologies
Gascón has even attacked her Emilia Pérez co-star Selena Gomez in this supposed tweet, which accompanied an image of Gomez and Hailey Bieber. “She’s a rich rat who plays the poor b—— whenever she can and will never stop bothering her ex-boyfriend [Justin Bieber] and his wife.” However, Gascón has stated that this tweet is fraudulent, though it certainly seems to align with her oeuvre.
In response to these racist and regretful revelations, Gascón has offered multiple variations on an apology. When she shut down her X account, she apologized (via The Hollywood Reporter) in a way that sounded more like martyrdom. “I’m sorry, but I can no longer allow this campaign of hate and misinformation to affect me and my family, so at their request I am closing my account on X,” wrote the actor. “But if you want, you can continue attacking me as if I were responsible for hunger and wars in the world… But I tell you something: ‘The more you try to sink me, the stronger it will make me. The greater the victory will be.’
“Mamá, life has put me here to send a message of hope and love in this world, and I am going to fulfill it,” concluded Gascón. So touching.
Gascón Is Also a Scapegoat
Those nasty social media messages from Gascón have not only been condemned by critics and the public, but also Gascón’s co-stars, Audiard, and Netflix itself. The actress may be nominated for an Oscar, but Netflix has mostly removed her from their For Your Consideration campaign, and are no longer paying for Gascón’s travel. Zoe Saldaña responded to the controversy by saying, “It makes me really sad because I don’t support [it], and I don’t have any tolerance for any negative rhetoric towards people of any group.”
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Audiard was much more frank in an interview with Deadline on Feb. 5, 2025, and brought everything up to date. “I haven’t spoken to her, and I don’t want to. She is a self-destructive approach that I can’t interfere in, and I really don’t understand why she’s continuing,” admitted Audiard. “Why is she harming herself? Why? I don’t understand it, and what I don’t understand about this too is why she’s harming people who were very close to her.” The director added:
“I just don’t understand why she’s continuing to harm us. I’m not getting in touch with her because right now she needs space to reflect and take accountability for her actions… She’s really playing the victim. She’s talking about herself as a victim, which is surprising. It’s as if she thought that words don’t hurt.”
It seems as if Gascón is being thrown under the bus; though if all the messages were reported accurately, then she may metaphorically deserve it. But so does everyone who made Emilia Pérez. In a way, the controversy over her messages has been a distraction from the actual issues of the film itself, not the personal bigotry and bitterness of one of its stars. Gascón’s cruel history certainly reflects the empty gestures of Hollywood — celebrating identity politics and ignoring who the person actually is. But there is so much more wrong with Emilia Pérez, and not just its utterly cringe song about vaginoplasty.
‘Emilia Pérez’ Fails Trans People on Every Level
Beyond its combination of genres and stylized direction, the people who praise Emilia Pérez generally do so for its supposedly fearless depiction of a powerful trans person or for being, as one critic calls it, a “bold gender-affirmation musical.” Film critics and audiences who are actually transgender or identify as LGBTQ+ tend to see the movie as a cis man’s deeply confused and embarrassing attempt to represent trans identity.
In a piece from The Pink News titled, “As a trans woman, this is why I think Emilia Pérez is sub-par, disingenuous, harmful nonsense,” Amelia Hansford writes, “It’s a script that is so alienated from the process of transitioning as a trans woman – and yet blurts falsehoods out with such bold, intense conviction.” Meanwhile, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) writes, “Emilia Pérez is a step backward for trans representation.”
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Perhaps it goes back to Audiard’s simplistic understanding of the subject. He said in an interview for The Hollywood Reporter, “Often in the films I make, there’s this theme of the double life, or more precisely, the choice of life, the cost of a life. In other words, how many lives does one have the right to live?” The director uses gender reassignment surgery as a metaphor to complement the story of a violent criminal trying to escape their life of crime and attempt repentance. That’s a deeply flawed way to incorporate trans representation into a film; a transgender person is not “escaping.” As Hansford writes in The Pink News:
“The issue with this is that transition isn’t a moral decision, and the act of transitioning alone doesn’t somehow absolve you of your past self. It isn’t a death, nor is it a rebirth. Instead, Emilia continues to use contacts from the cartel, manipulates her family into trusting and spending time with her, becomes physically aggressive near the film’s ending when reconnecting doesn’t pan out, and even opts to threaten her wife, played by Selena Gomez, with financial blackmail. None of this is framed in a way that makes any thematic sense and ends up showcasing Emilia as yet another psychopathic trans character to add to the pile.”
Oh, ‘Emilia Pérez’ Insults Mexicans, Too
Emilia Pérez is a film that not only pretends to be about Mexican culture, but pretends to be set there as well. It’s filmed in France, however, by a Frenchman, and the cast is filled with mostly non-Mexicans. The accents of these actors (especially Selena Gomez) have been picked apart and mocked by Mexicans and Spanish-speakers ever since the trailer was released. “I definitely wish I had more time [to prep],” Gomez told Remezcla about learning Spanish for the role.
It’s the cast and crew’s disdain for authenticity and Mexico itself that makes this even more egregious. “I think this movie is more Mexican than what many Mexicans make,” Gascón told Rolling Stone in October 2024. In the World of Reel article “Jacques Audiard, the #1 Most Hated Man in Mexico, Sparks More Backlash,” it’s noted how Audiard showcased his stunning condescension and lack of charisma with the following one-liner:
Spanish is a language of modest countries, of developing countries, of the poor and migrants.
In a conversation with Guillermo del Toro for The Hollywood Reporter, Audiard explained how Mexico and Mexicans didn’t fit the vision he had for his Mexican film. “I had all these images in my head, and these images weren’t going to fit on the streets of Mexico, in the interiors of Mexico. I needed a bigger tool of stylization,” said Audiard. “I wasn’t finding the people to play these roles. I saw lots of actresses in Mexico, I met trans actresses, but it simply wasn’t working.” This is made all the more hilariously insulting when you consider the casting director and other people behind the film having stated how “authentic” they wanted the movie to be.
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The casting director for the film, Carla Hool, put her foot firmly in her mouth when she discussed the casting process of Emilia Pérez, unintentionally revealing how hypocritical the production was. “Jessi, Rita, and Emilia, they were all Mexican characters. So we did a big search in Mexico and in the U.S. and in Spain and all Latin America, and we wanted to keep it really authentic,” said Hool. “But at the end of the day, the best actors who embodied these characters are the ones that [you see in the film]. So we had to figure out how to adjust authenticity.”
It’s even more depressing to realize that The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has previously written of Hool, “With every project she takes on, she carries the same critical mission: to fight for authenticity and to open up possibilities for all kinds of Latinx actors.” It’s hard to find anything else that so succinctly reflects the misguided nature of some Oscar voters than this.
The Academy Awards Tend to Reward Empty Social Justice Posturing
Speaking of the Oscars. Several astute critics have lambasted liberal Hollywood for showering Emilia Pérez with awards attention. It’s a situation similar to many other “social justice” films that have garnered Oscars. There are movies about racism that are relatively empty vessels written and directed by white people (Driving Miss Daisy and Green Book), and the same thing with films about LGBTQ+ issues (Dallas Buyers Club, The Danish Girl). There’s Slumdog Millionaire, a film about an Indian man climbing out of poverty, written and directed by well-off white British men. There’s Crash (2004), about multiracial tensions, written and directed by white men. There’s Gandhi, about the Indian independence from the British Empire, directed by a white British man. And on and on.
That unfortunate tradition continued with Emilia Pérez and its 13 Oscar nominations. Slash Film writes of “the well-meaning cis people desperately trying to prove they’re not transphobic by hyping up a regressive mess,” concluding that: “It’s wildly disappointing to realize just how many Academy voters are completely out of touch and clearly voting for the guise of performative progress of what Emilia Pérez symbolizes, rather than let the communities represented in the film take the lead and determine whether or not this is a portrayal that deserves celebration.”
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“To call this film awards bait would be doing a disservice to awards bait – Emilia Pérez, instead, is a film that thinks it demands respect just by the act of existing,” Hansfeld writes in The Pink News. Writing for Vox, Kyndall Cunningham sums up the hypocrisy wonderfully:
“Still, Emilia Pérez’s presence in the Oscars race isn’t exactly a shock, given that it falls neatly into a category of movies the white Hollywood establishment loves to celebrate: mawkish stories about people on society’s margins that allow viewers to feel socially aware through their consumption, without challenging any of the stereotypes and political messaging presented in them.”
The great irony of this is that Gascón herself has called out the Academy Awards for the same thing (albeit in her distinctly cruel, careless, and condescending way) in a since-deleted X post. “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,” Gascón wrote after the 2021 Oscars. “Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala.” One wonders if she’ll be attending this year’s gala. She might even win an award.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
