Jacques Audiard, the director of the Oscar-nominated musical “Emilia Pérez,” is currently not speaking with the film’s star, Karla Sofía Gascón, and added, “and I don’t want to.”
The film is up for 13 Oscars, including Best Actress for Gascón and Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Audiard, but its chances have taken a hit after some of Gascón’s racist tweets from years back resurfaced.
Audiard told Deadline that the controversy over Gascón’s social media posts is “unfortunately” getting all the media attention, and “that makes me very sad.”
The director said that he and Gascón shared a lot of trust while making the film, but the current situation is affecting their relationship.
“When you have that kind of relationship and suddenly you read something that that person has said, things that are absolutely hateful and worthy of being hated, of course that relationship is affected,” Audiard said. “It’s as if you fall into a hole. Because what Karla Sofía said is inexcusable.”
Audiard said he hasn’t spoken to Gascón recently and admitted, “I don’t want to” because “she is in a self-destructive approach that I can’t interfere in, and I really don’t understand why she’s continuing.”
He added that the star was harming herself as well as ”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.”
Audiard said Gascón “needs space to reflect and take accountability for her actions.”
The resurfaced posts that started the controversy go back as far as 2018 and include hateful remarks about Muslims, a tweet about Adolf Hitler “simply” having “his opinion of the Jews,” and a description of George Floyd, the Black man murdered by Minneapolis police in 2020, that calls him “a drug addict and a scammer,” according to a HuffPost translation.
Although Gascón initially apologized for her old posts, saying she was “deeply sorry to those I have caused pain,” she later changed her tune, telling CNN’s Juan Carlos Arciniegas that the controversial social media posts were harmless and describing some of them as sarcastic.
She then refused to step down from consideration for an Oscar, saying she has “not committed any crime nor have I harmed anyone.” She argued, “I am neither racist nor anything that all these people have tried to make others believe I am.”
Audiard expressed surprise at Gascón’s insistence that she’s done nothing wrong.
“She’s really playing the victim,” he said. “She’s talking about herself as a victim, which is surprising. It’s as if she thought that words don’t hurt.”
He also said that, like it or not, the controversy has affected the “Emilia Perez” Oscar campaign. “I thought I was coming back here full of enthusiasm and now there’s a sadness that we have to get past,” Audiard said.
Still, the director said he plans to continue campaigning for the film’s other Oscar contenders, including Best Supporting Actress nominee Saldaña.
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“I’m not alone in this business,” he said. “There’s Zoe. I want to and I’m going to champion and defend her.”
The Oscars air March 2 on ABC.