Netflix is breaking its silence on the controversy surrounding the most Oscar-nominated film this season, “Emilia Pérez.”
Racist and hateful posts to X, formerly Twitter, from the film’s lead, Karla Sofía Gascón, have landed her and the film in hot water.
Netflix, which acquired the film’s distribution rights, has mostly been quiet about the controversy up until now. The streamer’s Chief Content Officer, Bela Bajaria, talked about it while on “The Town” podcast.
The Academy Awards just weeks away, the film received 13 nominations, which includes Gascón’s history-making nod for Best Actress. She is the first openly transgender person to receive the nomination.
“I think it’s really a bummer for the 100 incredibly talented people who made an amazing movie,” she explained. “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 Zoe (Saldaña) and Selena (Gomez).”
She touted Netfix’s awards team on their “incredible campaign” for the film.
Many felt Netflix or someone tied to the film should’ve caught these posts ahead of time. When asked, Bajaria said, “It’s not really common practice for people to vet social tweets that way.”
But she did say that “a lot of people are reevaluating that” and she does “think it is raising questions for a lot of people about reevaluating that process.”
Given the massive amount of content Netflix deals with, she did mention how it would be a huge undertaking.
“Are we going to actually look at people’s personal social media of tens of thousands of people, every single day around the world, of the amount of original film and TV that we make and licensing and co-pros?”
Considering all the backlash the film is facing now due to its lead actress, Bajaria said the streaming giant would’ve still bought 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,” she said.
Gascón’s posts have since been removed.
They were posted back to 2020-21 and touched on many topics that were being discussed at that time, including the murder of George Floyd by a police officer.
In a post days after Floyd’s death, she wrote: “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. They’re all wrong.”
She also made disparaging remarks about Muslims. In one post that has been removed from November 2020, she wrote, “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.”
In a now-deleted post from 2021, Gascón wrote: “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.”
She has since apologized for the posts.
“I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt,” Gascón said in a statement from Netflix obtained by NPR. “As someone in a marginalized community, I know this suffering all too well, and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain. All my life, I have fought for a better world. I believe light will always triumph over darkness.”
Meanwhile, Gascón has taken a backseat this awards season and skipped out on ceremonies, It’s not clear if she will attend the SAG Awards on Feb. 23 or the Oscars on March 2.
Netflix is breaking its silence on the controversy surrounding the most Oscar-nominated film this season, “Emilia Pérez.” Racist and hateful posts to X, formerly Twitter, from the film’s lead, Karla Sofía Gascón, have landed her and the film in hot water. Netflix, which acquired the film’s distribution rights, has mostly been quiet about the controversy […]
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