Karla Sofía Gascón Breaks Down Repeatedly in Hour-Long TV Interview: “I Am Not a Racist”
Best-actress Oscar nominee Karla Sofía Gascón, whose awards campaign for Emilia Pérez was thrown into disarray last week by the revelation of years-old tweets widely seen as expressing bigoted views, addressed the controversy in a tearful, hourlong interview with CNN en Espa?ol on Saturday evening.
By turns defiant and penitent, the Spanish actress broke down repeatedly in defending herself against accusations of racism, antisemitism and xenophobia. While expressing regret for how her words have been interpreted, she also cast suspicion over the timing of the revelations, implying that they were part of an effort to sabotage her awards chances. Gascón is the first openly transgender performer to be nominated for an Oscar in an acting category.
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CNN en Espa?ol anchor Juan Carlos Arciniegas struggled to interrupt Gascón, whose outpouring appeared at times to be more of a monologue. Pressed by Arciniegas about whether she would renounce her Oscar nomination in light of the controversy, Gascón dismissed the idea out of hand: “I cannot renounce a nomination because what I have done is a job and what is being valued is my acting work,” she told the anchor. “And I cannot renounce a nomination either because I have not committed any crime nor have I harmed anyone, I am not a racist, nor am I anything that all these people have taken it upon themselves to try to make others believe that I am.”
The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Gascón set up the interview on her own without the involvement of anyone working on the film, which was distributed by Netflix.
Gascón began the interview with an apology for her since-deleted tweets (she deactivated her X account on Friday), echoing the contrition she has repeatedly shown over the past week. “My most sincere apologies to all the people who may have felt offended by the ways I express myself in my past, in my present and in my future.”
Among the Gascón tweets under scrutiny are opinions she shared on the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, which launched a global racial reckoning: “I truly believe that very few people ever cared about George Floyd, a drug addict and a hustler,” she tweeted at the time, “but his death has served to highlight once again that there are those who still consider Black people to be monkeys without rights and those who consider the police to be murderers. All wrong.”
She also drew condemnation for her position on Islam, calling for a ban of the religion in the name of human rights. A sample tweet from 2020: “Sorry, is it just my impression or are there more and 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.”
Regarding George Floyd, Gascón said that she had merely intended to point out the hypocrisy surrounding his elevation as a symbol of oppression. “He was a person who had been in a very difficult situation in his life and no one had helped him, and suddenly he becomes a symbol of a cause and everyone loved him,” she told Arciniegas.
“But for someone to think that … I have ever insulted a person because of their skin color, I do not allow that to anyone, to anyone,” Gascón added, visibly angry, and waving a finger at the camera.
In defending herself against accusations of Islamophobia, Gascón explained through tears that she had a deep personal relationship with a Muslim woman “whom I adore, whom I love and who has taught me so much about respect for people.”
She specified that what she opposed was radical Islam, adding that she was personally affected by the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, which occurred near her home.
She said she had gone out of her way to avoid causing harm to anyone or anything: “What have I done in my life? What have I done? I haven’t killed a single fly. When I have a spider in my house I put a little glass on it so as not to kill it and take it out to the street.
Gascón said that many of her tweets that have caused offense were misinterpreted; they were not expressing her own opinions but rather voicing a hypothetical opinion she condemned. Such was the case, she said, with a 2019 tweet that critics have described as defending Adolf Hitler: “This is the same old story, ‘blacks [are slaves] and women in the kitchen.’ But it is my opinion and it must be respected. I do not understand such world war against Hitler, he simply had his opinion about the jews.
Well, that’s how the world goes.”
Some of the screenshots of tweets circulating online, Gascón said, were not merely taken out of context or misrepresented, but outright fabricated. This was the case, she said, with one screenshot of a tweet attributed to her, calling her Emilia Pérez co-star Selena Gomez a “rich rat.”
“Of course that’s not mine,” Gascón told CNN. “I have never said anything about my partner. I would never refer to her that way.” The actress suggested that the allegedly false tweet was part of a targeted campaign against her: “I start thinking about where this comes from.”
The voting period for the Academy Awards will end on Feb. 18, and Gascón implied that the timing of the revelations was no accident, alluding to a dirty tricks campaign against her. “They have dedicated themselves to searching, to put together all the things that I had said at a time that I had written —most of which are false … most of them I don’t even recognize that I wrote them,” Gascón said. “And they put them all together and so it seems that she is a very bad person and we remove her just when we can do the most damage, right in the in the voting period.”
It is impossible to know how the controversy might affect the results of the best-actress race, which has been typically tight. But Gascón told CNN en Espa?ol that winning the prize was not her priority.
“I don’t give a damn about awards,” she claimed. “What I do care about is the people that I represent, because of what I represent in this world,” as a transgender trailblazer. “We can all change and be better people in this world.”
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