Netflix has broken its silence on Karla Sofía Gascón‘s controversial tweets, which have derailed Emilia Pérez‘s Oscar campaign. The streaming service’s chief content officer Bela Bajaria responded to the situation on The Town podcast, saying Gascón’s history of racist tweets took away from the film’s success.
“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.”
Bajaria added of Gascón’s co-stars, Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez, “It really is a bummer for a lot of the people, like Zoe and Selena. And in our awards team did an incredible campaign for that movie.”
When asked if Netflix would reevaluate its social media vetting for actors going forward, Bajaria noted, “It’s not really common practice for people to vet social tweets that way.” She confirmed, “A lot of people are reevaluating that… I do think it is raising questions for a lot of people about reevaluating that process.”
As for whether Netflix themselves are doing that, she said, “I think you also have to [ask]: Are we going to actually look at the personal social media of tens of thousand 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… If you ask me today, everything I know, we would still buy the movie today. That movie is incredible and it’s creative and it’s bold — that’s what you want, and it resonated with a lot of people this year.”
Chaos ensued after Gascón’s offensive posts about Muslims and George Floyd went viral last month. The Spanish actress is the first out transgender woman to be nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars, however, Netflix has been distancing itself from her in the weeks since, reportedly refocusing its awards campaign. Following the backlash, Gascón joined CNN En Español for an interview in which she claimed she had been subject to “cancel culture.”
Audiard told Deadline that Gascón’s past tweets were “inexcusable” and “hateful,” and accused Gascón of “playing the victim.” “I haven’t spoken to her, and I don’t want to,” said the director. “She is in a self-destructive approach that I can’t interfere in, and I really don’t understand why she’s continuing. Why is she harming herself? Why? I don’t understand it, and what I don’t understand about this too is why she’s harming people who were very close to her.”
Earlier this week, Gomez responded to the furor while speaking at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. “Some of the magic has disappeared, but I choose to continue to be proud of what I’ve done, and I’m just grateful and I live with no regrets,” the actress affirmed. “I would do this movie over and over again if I could.”
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