The tweets that sink Karla Sofía Gascón's Oscar bid

'Emilia Pérez' Oscar hopes blow up over Karla Sofía Gascón's tweets

Before the envelope is peine, the Oscar race for best actress already points to one name: Demi Moore, seen as the next winner. Spain's Karla Sofía Gascón, star of 'Emilia Pérez' and until recently the other big favorite, has seen her candidacy collapse after a series of old social media posts emerged containing racist, Sarracinophobic and derogatory content aimed at various groups. She was set to become the first trans actress to win the award and the second Spanish woman to do so; now the uproar is sweeping away her chances and, with them, those of the entire film team. The Academy, according to published reports, has been left baffled by the material. Speculation is growing about a last-minute change in the voting.

What the tweets that blew up her candidacy say

The repertoire is broad and touches almost every issue. On awards, the actress wrote that they increasingly resembled an activist ceremony and lamented an alleged "ethnic quota" when handing out statuettes. There are messages in which she speaks contemptuously of Latin Americans and justifies European colonization, and others dedicated to Guillermo del Toro the year he won for 'The Shape of Water': "They're going to have to change the name of the Oscars and hold them, instead of in Hollywood, in Tlalmanalco," she wrote.

There are also posts about Jovenlandeses in Spain, derogatory comments about the death of George Floyd, a mocking remark about the Chinese vaccine and a message about Miley Cyrus after her breakup with Liam Hemsworth in which she described her relationship with another woman as a "perversion." It is worth recalling the context in which all this erupts: the director of 'Emilia Pérez' himself had reportedly said that "Spanish is a language of developing countries and poor people." The film had been accumulating controversies for weeks.

The apology that landed worse than the posts themselves

Gascón deleted the tweets and published a statement: "As part of a marginalized community, I know this suffering very well and I am deeply sorry for those I have hurt. All my life I have fought for a better world. I believe light will always triumph over darkness." The text has not calmed tempers. Some point to the sequence of events: first the deletion, then the apology, and argue that correcting course is worse than standing by what was said, because it exposes that the standard bends to interest rather than conviction.

Should the performance or the candidate's biography decide?

Here the disagreement is fundamental. One side argues that an acting award is judged by the work on screen and that the candidate's personal life should not weigh in. Against that is a hard-to-refute argument: these awards have never been antiseptic. It is recalled that the industry has honored filmmakers with known legal cases and that promotional campaigns have been playing internal politics for decades. If the standard is applied selectively, the complaint is not against politicization, but against whom it benefits.

The cost for 'Emilia Pérez': from the Oscar to the Goya

The blow is not only personal. The producers have decided that the actress will not represent the film at the Goya Awards: if 'Emilia Pérez' wins the prize for best European film, those who go up to collect it will be the Spanish distributors, the company Wanda. It is the clearest sign of how an individual controversy spills over into the balance sheet of a project involving dozens of people.

The business of nominations

At this point, the discussion about who deserves what coexists with a more down-to-earth one: what a nomination produces. A film with presence in several categories multiplies its visibility in theaters, and controversy — talked about more than ever — is also visibility. Some sum it up bluntly: the award matters less than the noise it generates. Against that backdrop, the favorite's fall is not just an artistic misfortune; it is a promotional loss for a project that can no longer cash in on its star candidacy.

With the predictions rewritten and Demi Moore in the lead, it remains to be seen which votes weigh more, those for the film or those for the noise. And an unresolved contradiction: the same industry that boasts of rewarding on merit spends months arguing over ideology.