Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón has deleted her X account after a number of her offensive posts about Muslims and George Floyd resurfaced on social media.
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Gascón is the first transgender woman to receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination, given for her title role in the musical/drama about a Mexican lawyer (Zoe Saldaña) who is hired to help a cartel drug lord (Gascón) with her transition. Selena Gomez also appears in the film, which is nominated for 13 Academy Awards in total.
After apologising for her past offensive comments about Muslims, Floyd and Oscars diversity, Gascón deleted her X account on Friday (January 31).
“I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt,” she said in a statement to Variety. “As someone in a marginalised community, I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain. All my life I have fought for a better world. I believe light will always triumph over darkness”.
In one 2020 post, the actress posted a picture of a Muslim family with a woman in a burka, describing the clothing tradition as “deeply disgusting”.
In another, shared a few days after George Floyd was killed by a police officer, she wrote: “I really think that very few people ever cared about George Floyd, a drug addict swindler”.
In 2021, she also wrote about the Oscars: “More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films, I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M. Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala”.
Gascón’s statement come a few days after Fernanda Torres, also nominated for Best Actress for her role in I’m Still Here, apologised for appearing in Blackface in a sketch show from 2008.