This week, the Oscars race received a January Shock.
With one month to go, Finest Actress nominee Karla Sofía Gascón, the Spanish star of “Emilia Perez” and the primary transgender performer to ever be nominated for an Academy Award, was known as out for offensive tweets from as lately as 4 years in the past.
What had been they about? What weren’t they about?
In Spanish, she advised Islam needs to be banned. Apparently an equal-opportunity offender, she additionally hammered Catholics and known as George Floyd a “drug addict swindler.”
Inform us how you actually really feel, Karla.
Gascón, 52, even took intention on the Oscars. After Yuh-Jung Youn (“Minari”) and Daniel Kaluuya (“Judas and the Black Messiah”) received in 2021, the X addict couldn’t assist herself. “I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M,” she blasted out.
She was a no-name again then. (OK, she nonetheless principally is now.) However the belated backlash compelled Gascón to delete her X account and sort-of apologize. She mentioned, “I believe light will always triumph over darkness.”
A meh culpa if there ever was one.
Effectively, I for one don’t consider Gascón will conquer Demi Moore, Fernanda Torres, Mikey Madison or Cynthia Erivo on the Dolby Theater subsequent month. If she even exhibits up.
This fallout has not been contained to a social-media bubble of Oscars fanatics or the LA trades. It’s made newspapers and TV everywhere in the globe.
Gascón’s probabilities of profitable had been all the time minuscule. Now, they’re kaput. {That a} trans actress from an indie foreign-language musical shared such controversial opinions is solely not one thing Hollywood can compute.
And that’s an enormous blow to “Emilia Perez,” which, with essentially the most nominations of any movie, was the Finest Image frontrunner. Not. Gascón is synonymous with the title.
Netflix, maybe regretfully, has made her the face of their film.
On the flick’s Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant social gathering at Nobu, the streamer’s flacks walked a beaming Gascón across the room enthusiastically introducing her to the media. The expensive occasion was completely about her, quite than co-stars Selena Gomez or Zoe Saldana (who nonetheless will possible win).
Then, she — not director Jacques Audiard or the producers — accepted the Golden Globe for Finest Movement Image – Musical or Comedy.
In a speech that shops known as “powerful,” Gascón had a prophetic message: “I want to say to you, raise your voice and say, ‘I am who I am, not who you want’”
She wasn’t mendacity.
True, “Emilia Perez” has confronted different headwinds. American viewers haven’t gone gaga for the film, which is an outré musical a couple of Mexican drug cartel chief who transitions into a girl. And in Mexico, ticket-buyers have been postpone by the way in which the shot-in-France movie depicts their tradition.
However a shrewd awards marketing campaign might’ve batted these criticisms away by saying “art” and “history” a bunch — and so they had been. US moviegoers flip up their noses at Finest Image winners on a regular basis lately. The academy is detached to that.
What they’re not detached to is nasty award-season narratives.
Giving Michelle Yeoh her first Oscar and celebrating the comebacks of Brendan Fraser and Ke Huy Quan regarded and felt nice.
That’s why 62-year-old Moore’s Golden Globes speech final month, through which she mentioned, “This is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor,” cemented her because the frontrunner for Finest Actress.
Gascón’s offended previous rants, then again, have given the academy a stable motive to not vote for her or “Perez.” “The Brutalist” and “Anora” are on the rise.
Look, on Friday the movie might nonetheless take residence the Critics Alternative Award, which completed voting earlier than this bombshell dropped. And the Producers and Administrators Guilds solely have just a few days left to choose. Wins there might increase its momentum some.
However the SAGs? Not an opportunity. They nonetheless have 19 days of voting to go, and the Display Actors Guild is left of Lenin. The musical with the most effective odds there may be “Wicked.”
Nonetheless issues shake out, for the subsequent month Netflix ain’t chill.
