How to Lose an Oscar in 10 Days
For months, the actor Karla Sofía Gascón had been reaping the rewards of leading a prestigious film. She plays the title character in Emilia Pérez, about a Mexican cartel boss who transitions into a woman and seeks to build a more virtuous life. The Spanish-language musical has faced waves of backlash since its release last year—but it has also found a devoted fan base among awards bodies.
Gascón was one of its anchors: She delivered an impassioned speech dedicated to the trans community at the Cannes Film Festival, where she shared the Best Actress prize with her castmates. When Emilia Pérez won the Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy last month, Gascón movingly addressed the audience. She made history shortly thereafter, becoming the first openly trans performer to earn an Oscar nomination. A relative unknown in the United States, the Spanish actor personified a message of tolerance and acceptance; Emilia Pérez, despite all of the criticism surrounding it, looked to have elevated a star who matched the heroism of Emilia Pérez herself.
But her momentum soon came to a halt. A journalist discovered an array of Gascón’s tweets dating back to 2016 that contained racist language and crude jokes about a range of marginalized communities. In response, the actor stopped following the typical awards-season playbook: She posted defensive updates on Instagram, sent a long-winded statement without the assistance of a public-relations team to The Hollywood Reporter, and personally scheduled a lengthy, tearful interview on CNN en Espa?ol. Gascón became Hollywood’s persona non grata, just under a month before the Academy Awards ceremony.
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The actor’s trajectory represents one of the most dramatic implosions of an awards run in Oscars history. Twists and gaffes happening at the tail end of a race—for which this year’s voting round ended on Tuesday—are nothing new. (Gascón’s fellow Best Actress nominee Fernanda Torres weathered her own controversy this season; a clip of her wearing blackface in a comedy sketch resurfaced last month. The I’m Still Here star responded by releasing a measured apology.) But the nature of Gascón’s fall is unusual. Rarely has a nominee’s curated image—that of a righteous up-and-comer, applauded by an industry eager to demonstrate its tolerance—so thoroughly differed from the one conjured by her personal online accounts. Her case is a fascinating look at how industry status can collide with the social-media era: In spite of the awards season’s purported aims to celebrate cinema, a performer’s off-screen narrative can matter just as much as their work.
Gascón’s diminished chances of winning a trophy arguably resulted not so much from the resurfacing of her bigoted tweets, but mainly from the way she diverged from established public-relations guidelines. Oscar campaigns tend to be carefully controlled endeavors, and Netflix, Emilia Pérez’s distributor in the United States, has one of the most experienced awards-strategy teams in Hollywood. The streamer had helped turn Gascón from an unknown in the U.S. into a contender—and on the same day that her old posts garnered attention, Netflix circulated her official apology. “As someone in a marginalized community,” read the standard-issue statement, “I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain.”
But soon afterward—and reportedly without clearing her plans with Netflix—Gascón went rogue. She sent The Hollywood Reporter an additional statement claiming that her tweets were misunderstood, at times even by herself. (“Sometimes I, myself, am not even aware of having written something negative,” she wrote.) She shared thoughts on Instagram about her words being taken out of context. And she scheduled the CNN en Espa?ol interview, during which she argued that she’d done nothing wrong. She also claimed that her co-stars—including Zoe Salda?a, the Supporting Actress Oscar front-runner—supported her “200 percent,” despite no public evidence that they shared her sentiments. “I have not committed any crime, nor have I harmed anyone,” she said. “I am not a racist, nor am I anything that all these people have taken it upon themselves to try to make others believe I am.”
The more Gascón tried to salvage her reputation by herself, the more those associated with the film pulled away from her. Shortly after Emilia Pérez nabbed 13 Oscar nominations—the most of any movie this year—Netflix began removing billboards in Los Angeles that singled her out; the company has reportedly restricted her access to the team’s travel funds, making it harder for her to attend more precursor award ceremonies. Gascón responded to comments from the film’s director, Jacques Audiard, about her “self-destructive approach” by pledging on Instagram to stay silent going forward. Earlier this month, Netflix’s chief content officer, Bela Bajaria, addressed the scandal, calling the controversy “a bummer.” (The company is also “reevaluating” its strategy for vetting actors’ social-media accounts, she said.)
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Gascón’s attempt to control her image is singular in its audacity. None of her fellow awards contenders this season has made such bold, unfiltered moves while trying to convince Academy voters that they’re worthy of a trophy. Even before her tweets resurfaced, the Emilia Pérez star had begun deviating from the film’s standard promotional press campaign by chiding Torres’s social-media strategy. Criticizing another nominee’s tactics is an inadvisable step for someone on the Oscar track; the act can come off as combative, and the Academy can penalize attacks against fellow contenders. “There are people working with Fernanda Torres tearing me and Emilia Pérez down,” she claimed in an interview. “That speaks more about their movie than mine.” Gascón later retracted the remarks and explained that she wasn’t targeting her competitor, but merely trying to admonish “toxicity and violent hate speech on social media.” And then, when her past social-media posts came up, she completely ignored the rules of how to face a blowback. She could have followed in Torres’s footsteps—the I’m Still Here actor had just demonstrated how effective sticking with a standard mea culpa can be—yet once again, Gascón diverged from the norm.
Not everyone follows the Oscars playbook, of course. But the other most unconventional campaign this year is notable because it’s so thoroughly unlike what Gascón is doing. Timothée Chalamet, who’s up for his performance as Bob Dylan in the musical biopic A Complete Unknown, certainly seems to be defying the rules of typical press tours, surprising his look-alikes at a contest in New York City and riding a Lime bike onto the red carpet at a premiere, among other antics. Chalamet’s efforts have worked in part because he is an established, controversy-free celebrity, a household name with movie-star appeal. If anything, his well-received run so far, even if he doesn’t win the Oscar, underlines what made Gascón’s Hail Mary fail: Chalamet’s calculated, personality-driven stunts evoke the youthful renegade appeal of the cultural icon he played, courting chatter but not criticism.
Meanwhile, Gascón’s defensive behavior, by turns rebellious and inflammatory, undid the storyline she and Netflix had cultivated for months: that the actor intimately understood why Emilia Pérez succeeded with so many awards-season voters, many of whom are Gascón’s peers. Gascón’s character in the film is supposed to epitomize the human capacity for good, and for overcoming flaws with grace. After the actor’s tweets resurfaced, she emphasized that “light will always triumph over darkness” in her Netflix-approved apology; the statement repositioned Gascón as remorseful about her past, just like Emilia had been. But if Gascón appeared to exemplify the film’s message early in its journey toward Oscar glory, she has come to embody a different narrative—that of a shocking, largely self-inflicted public collapse. It’s not the kind that tends to win someone an Oscar.
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