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Considerations
Covering the annual film industry awards races, with sharp commentary on the pictures, the players, the money and the spectacle. by Tyler Coates
Considerations: The Gascón Press Tour
Emilia Pérez (Netflix) Every Tuesday Tyler Coates publishes his new Filmmaker newsletter, Considerations, devoted to the awards race. To receive it early and in your in-box, subscribe here.
In October, I told (warned?) a publicist friend that it wouldn’t surprise me if we saw some old-fashioned, Weinstein- and Rudin-style opposition campaigning this Oscar season. Back then, the prominent narrative was that the field was wide open without a clear frontrunner, and most of the studios and marketing agencies were operating with smaller budgets. By this time last week, the only controversies were about the use of AI to perfect the Hungarian accents in The Brutalist (which raised flags for many who don’t like the use of AI in artmaking to begin with) or the lack of an intimacy coordinator on the set of Anora(which sparked a heated debate that seems to have been quarantined within Twitter/X), it felt like that was as far as things might go.
Then Karla Sofía Gascón’s years-old Islamaphobic tweets surfaced. And there were a lotof them, plus some about George Floyd. And one that seemed to attack her costar Selena Gomez, which was later revealed to be doctored. (On top of all of this, Gomez has been the center of a right-wing attack after she posted an emotional response to ICE deportations; needless to say, she may have had the most stressful week of anyone attached to Emilia Pérez.) Because Gascón’s posts were in Spanish, and she has since deleted her X account, it’s difficult to quote anything beyond that.
At this point, it feels like complaining about Emilia Pérez is akin to participating in a pile-on. I’ve already acknowledged I’m not a fan, and while there are a lot of people who are pretty vocal about their objections to the film (including trans and Mexican critics alike), it clearly has enough support within the Academy to earn those 13 Oscar nominations. As a pundit, it’s not really my place to have an opinion about a movie’s merits—I’m not an Academy member, after all, and I don’t think I have any influence over voters. But I’m not completely impartial here, either. I think the film has a lot of problems in its script and direction, but movies are group projects; there are things about Emilia Pérez that I enjoyed and I believe are deserving of their accolades, particularly Gascón and Zoe Saldańa’s performances.
I also want to note that I can only imagine what has been slung Gascón’s way throughout the film’s extended press tour, which started in June with its Cannes premiere and is still going nearly seven months later. She’s the first openly transgender performer to be nominated for an acting Oscar. She’s been elevated to an incredibly visible and global platform at a time when being a trans person in America is downright terrifying—not that it’s easy anywhere in the world. Even the cover of The Hollywood Reporter on which she appeared had a line teasing a profile of the notably anti-trans Ben Shapiro hovering over her shoulder, a man described by the magazine as “conquering the MAGA-verse.” This is the atmosphere in which she’s operating.
I’ve been thinking about all of that in the last few days as I’ve watched what seemed like a total PR meltdown since Thursday. After the tweets became news—and a much bigger controversy than just some film fans fighting with one another on X—it took hours for Netflix to issue a statement on Gascón’s behalf. It wasn’t an apology as much as a boilerplate response crafted by publicists managing a crisis. Then Gascón doubled down without the Netflix team’s help, first sharing an explanation for deleting her X account to THR, later posting a lengthier scribe on Instagram and then sitting for an hour-long interview with CNN en Español which saw her devolve into a teary plea in which she denied her racism. Considering she’s had to defend herself for months against anti-trans attacks (plus defend the film against its trans and Mexican critics, too), I can imagine that now being at the center of another firestorm—this time of her own making, no doubt about it—would be tough and unsettling.
Now, with a month until the Oscars, we’re left with so many questions. According to THR, Gascón won’t be in Los Angeles this week for the AFI luncheon, the Critics Choice Awards, the DGA Awards or the PGA Awards. Will Gascón continue to participate in the season, attending the BAFTA, Critics Choice and SAG Awards where she is nominated? Will she go to the Oscars? The plan for the show is set to bring out five Oscar winners to give speeches for each acting nominee in their category; should Gascón attend the ceremony, which previous Oscar-winning actress will draw the short straw to praise her performance in front of an audience of millions? And how will the show manage not to address it? Because I don’t think there’s funny banter to be mined from a trans actress’ history-making nomination being undercut by her own bad behavior.
And there’s the biggest question: How does this affect Emilia Pérez overall? It’s hard to imagine that Gascón could single-handedly torpedo her film’s overall Oscar chances, but the longer she draws out this mess the longer it becomes a completely uncomfortable experience for all involved—not just for her collaborators on the film and the Netflix team handling the campaign, but also the entire Academy. Will voters separate the art from one of its artists, enough for this to represent the best of 2024’s films? Can this film win best picture without an immediate stain hanging over it? One can assume Netflix thinks not: In FYC email blasts this week, Zoe Saldańa is now front and center, with Gascón nowhere to be found—ironic considering folks have argued for months that Saldańa is the movie’s lead despite her supporting actress submission.
Presumably, Netflix still wants this film to win something; the company’s other Oscar-nominated features are Maria (for Edward Lachman’s cinematography), The Six-Triple Eight (for Diane Warren’s song “The Journey”) and Wallace & Gromit: Murder Most Fowl (for animated feature), and none are frontrunners in their respective categories. (Netflix also has a doc short, The Only Girl in the Orchestra, and a live-action short, Anuja.) To walk away completely empty-handed wouldn’t be a great look, so the next few weeks of the campaign are extremely important. I did notice that at least two Penske Media staffers who specialize in awards coverage (not music) were guests of Netflix’s awards team at the Grammys on Sunday night. I’m sure it was simply to celebrate Maestro’s nomination (and win) for best compilation soundtrack for a visual medium—that it happened in the middle of a PR disaster was just a coincidence.
I’ll admit I’ve been thinking about the alternate reality in which Netflix didn’t acquire Emilia Pérez at Cannes last June. Would it have found another distributor that believed so strongly in its awards prospects? Which company might have purchased it? And would that company have the deep pockets of Netflix’s marketing budget, not just to market its release but also keep it top of mind for Academy voters for a months-long stretch? Now, Emilia Pérez is pretty much all I can think about—and I’m not sure that is a good thing at all.
