Karla Sofía Gascón Breaks Down Repeatedly in Hour-Long TV Interview: “I Am Not a Racist” https://t.co/6kEUsaKwf6
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 2, 2025
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 expressing bigoted views, addressed the controversy in a tearful, hourlong interview with CNN en Español on Saturday evening.
She 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.
• Pressed by CNN en Español anchor Juan Carlos Arciniegas about whether she would renounce her Oscar nomination in light of the controversy, Gascón dismissed the idea: “I cannot renounce a nomination because what I have done is a job and what is being valued is my acting work. 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 learned that Gascón set up the interview on her own without the involvement of anyone working on the film, which was distributed by Netflix.
• 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</b>, adding that she was personally affected by the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, which occurred near her home.
• Gascón said that many of her tweets that have caused offense were misinterpreted and some of the screenshots of tweets circulating online 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 about her Selena Gomez tweet. “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 […] 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. 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.”
• “I don’t give a damn about awards,” she also 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.”
Entire interview summary at the Source
