A senior executive at Netflix says it’s “such a bummer” that the controversy surrounding Karla Sofía Gascón has impacted the Oscar-nominated Emilia Pérez.
Speaking to Matthew Belloni on The Town podcast, Netflix’s chief content officer, Bela Bajaria, addressed the backlash to Gascón’s resurfaced history of offensive social media posts, which has marred the record-breaking 13 Oscar nominations clocked up by Jacques Audiard’s musical.
“I think it’s really a bummer for the 100 incredibly talented people who made an amazing movie,” Bajaria said. “And if you look at the nominations, and all of this awards love that it’s received, I think it’s such a bummer that it distracted from that.
“It really has kind of taken the conversation in a different way [from] this incredible movie that Jacques Audiard – who is an incredible director – has made. It really is a bummer for a lot of the people, like [co-stars] Zoe [Saldaña] and Selena [Gomez]. And our awards team did an incredible campaign for that movie.”
Netflix and Gascón’s personal representatives have been criticised for not spotting the actress’ problematic tweets earlier. Bajaria said it would probably mean a change in internal policy, adding: “I do think it is raising questions for a lot of people about re-evaluating that process.”
However, she also expressed concern about the logistics of setting up such a process. “I think you also have to [ask]: are we going to actually look at the personal social media of tens of thousands of people, every single day around the world, [given the] amount of original film and TV and co-prods that we make and license? It raises a lot of questions about what that should look like.”
The stars of Emilia Pérez have also spoken out about the controversy over the past week, with Zoe Saldaña expressing in a podcast that she was “sad” and “disappointed” but she couldn’t “speak for other people’s actions”.
Selina Gomez, meanwhile, told the Santa Barbara film festival that while “some of the magic has disappeared”, she continues to be proud of the film.
Bajaria echoed that sentiment, saying Netflix stood by its decision to acquire the film after its overwhelmingly positive reaction at Cannes last May. “If you asked me today, everything that I know, we would still buy the movie today,” she said. “That movie is incredible and it’s creative and it’s bold. That’s what you want. You want to take those big swings.”
Last month, posts on X (formerly Twitter) from Gascón’s account had surfaced – these tweets had expressed hateful views regarding Muslims, the 2020 murder of George Floyd and the Oscars. She has since apologised for the comments, denying she is a racist, and has deleted her account on the social media site.