Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón has said that she is stepping back from the ongoing award campaigning for the film and will be offering up “silence” following director Jacques Audiard’s comments.
In a recent statement posted to Instagram, Gascón said that after seeing the interview in which Audiard said he had no desire to speak to Gascón and didn’t understand why she was still doing press, she would be stepping back from any media opportunities.
“Following Jacques interview that I understand, I decided, for the film, for Jacques, for the cast, for the incredible crew who deserves it, for the beautiful adventure we all had together, to let the work talk for itself, hoping my silence will allow the film to be appreciated for what it is, a beautiful ode to love and difference,” she wrote on Instagram. “I sincerely apologize to everyone who has been hurt along the way. Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.”
“I haven’t spoken to her, and I don’t want to,” Audiard recently told Deadline. “She is in a self-destructive approach that I can’t interfere in, and I really don’t understand why she’s continuing. Why is she harming herself? Why? I don’t understand it, and what I don’t understand about this too is why she’s harming people who were very close to her. I’m thinking in this thing of how hurting others, of how she’s hurting the crew and all these people who worked so incredibly hard on this film. I’m thinking of myself, I’m thinking of Zoe [Saldaña] and Selena [Gomez]. I just don’t understand why she’s continuing to harm us.”
What is the Karla Sofía Gascón controversy?
Earlier this month, past comments from Gascón surfaced where the actress commented on the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the Muslim population in her native Spain, and even Christopher Columbus and the removal of his statues.
“Let me get this straight, a guy tries to pass off a counterfeit bill after consuming methamphetamine, an idiot policeman arrives and goes too far in arresting him, killing him, ruining the lives of his family and his colleagues, and turning the guy with the bill into a martyr hero,” Gascón wrote in a tweet in 2020 (via THR). “I truly believe that very few people ever cared about George Floyd, a drug addict and a hustler, 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.”
Gascón also took umbrage with the growing Muslim population in Spain, saying that Islam goes “against European values and violate [sic] human rights” and should be banned.
“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,” she posted on November 23, 2020. “Maybe next year instead of English we’ll have to teach Arabic.”
(Source: Deadline)
