Before Karla Sofía Gascón’s meltdown: The 4 biggest Oscar campaign scandals of the 2000s
The gold-plated meltdown that has followed the revelation of Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón’s past anti-Muslim and racist tweets — with anti-George Floyd and pro-Hitler sentiments thrown in — has now required numerous apologies/explanations from the Best Actress Oscar nominee. Gascón’s previous online remarks (as well as her claim of “social media attacks” on her by the team from I’m Still Here nominee Fernanda Torres, an Motion Picture Academy rule-break by Gascón that she denies) have seriously cratered the odds for her and her film, which is nominated for 13 Oscars. The journalist and podcaster who uncovered Gascón’s troubling social media posts insists it was good old-fashioned reporting and she was not a “studio plant” fueling a smear campaign underwritten by a rival nominee.
In any case Gascón’s self-inflicted mess is the latest example of an internet-powered scandal that has threatened to derail an Oscar campaign. Here’s a look at the four most notable examples this century and how they played out.
More from GoldDerby
Green Book (2018)
As this fact-based drama — about a blue-collar bouncer who chauffeured a Black concert pianist across the South in 1962 — was slow-motoring towards Oscar night, it ran into speed bumps. First, costar Viggo Mortensen was called out for using the N-word at a screening when discussing insults Don Shirley — Mahershala Ali’s character — faced during the era the film was set in. Then Shirley’s family denied that the late musician had a strong friendship with Tony Lip, the bodyguard-driver Mortensen played. Six weeks before the Oscars, cowriter/producer Nick Vallelonga apologized for an anti-Muslim tweet that was dug up from four years prior. Then stories surfaced of director Peter Farrelly’s onetime habit of showing his private parts as a “joke” he and his brother Bobby enjoyed during the making of the wild comedies that made them famous. (A contrite Farrelly said he’d been “an idiot.”)
And the outcome was… Green Book got a surprise green light when older Academy members ignored internet smears and responded to the Driving Miss Daisy vibes. The preferential ballot surely also helped, as the film’s appearance as a No. 2 or 3 choice boosted it in the final tally, while an increasingly-popular tendency to split the winning director and film netted Roma awards for Best Director, Cinematography, and Foreign Language Film — opening the path for Green Book to win Best Picture, Supporting Actor for Ali and Original Screenplay.
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Director Kathryn Bigelow’s drama about the hunt for Osama bin Laden as seen through the eyes of a CIA analyst was the filmmaker’s follow-up to her Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker. But ZDT was hit by a story in The New Yorker saying the film endorsed the torture of prisoners in the so-called War on Terror. That piece emerged less than a week before Oscar voting started and joined online allegations that the filmmakers got special access to classified info.
And the outcome was… Bigelow, the first woman to win Best Director, missed her target of a second nom. As the awards approached, some Democrats and Republicans inside the Beltway bad-mouthed the film, which helped sink its cred — while inside Hollywood, eventual top pic Argo gained ground by combining movie showmanship with statesmanship. On the big night, ZDT won only Sound Editing (in a tie with the 007 flick Skyfall), losing in four other categories, including Best Picture, which went to the more palatable true-life tale Argo.
The King’s Speech (2010)
Colin Firth’s Oscar-winning portrayal of King George VI — who suffered from a lifelong stutter — as England proclaims war on Germany in 1939 was almost torpedoed from within. An anonymous Academy member reportedly mass-emailed an assertion (which originated in a 2002 London Observer article) that George VI tried to prevent Jews fleeing Germany from entering Palestine, which was under British control in the 1930s. Some Academy members allegedly declared they couldn’t vote for the film knowing that detail.
And the outcome was… With Inception a bit too wild and The Social Network a bit too wonky, the traditional-dress The King’s Speech spoke loud enough to voters to drown out the decades-old geopolitical footnote. From a dozen noms came Firth’s Best Actor victory, as well as wins for Original Screenplay, Best Director (Tom Hooper), and, the crowning glory, Best Picture.
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
The first smear campaign of the 21st century. Director Ron Howard’s biopic about Nobel-winning mathematician John Nash’s decades-long struggle with mental illness seemed to have everything added up, before negative variables turned up not long after the film opened in multiplexes. Gossip sites alleged the movie omitted Nash’s sexual relations with men, that he had an illegitimate child, and that he’d made antisemitic slurs in letters to colleagues. Nash, then 73, went on CBS’ 60 Minutes one week before the Oscarcast to address the claims.
And the outcome was… With the online outrage about the film starting on then-notorious scandal site the Drudge Report, a big voting bloc likely saw it as overly vindictive — as defenders stood up for the film. (Roger Ebert would write, “The mugging of this film is the most disturbing element of this Oscar season.”) Where smear campaigns were once whispered over caviar and cocktails, this brash new world wide web looked too ugly. The Academy gave it Best Director, Supporting Actress (Jennifer Connelly), Adapted Screenplay… and Best Picture.
Best of GoldDerby
Sign up for Gold Derby's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
