Yahoo Lifestyle How Emilia Pérez Set Karla Sofía Gascón Free
Karla Sofía Gascón knows there has never been a film quite like Emilia Pérez.
In the audacious new film from French auteur Jacques Audiard, Gascón plays Juan “Manitas” Del Monte, a Mexico City cartel kingpin who enlists a beleaguered lawyer named Rita (Zoe Saldaña) to help fake his death in order to secretly undergo gender-affirming surgery and live openly as a woman abroad.
Years later, Gascón’s newly rechristened Emilia Pérez tracks down Rita with another request. Wanting to atone for her life of crime, Emilia not only wants to partner with Rita to run a non-profit dedicated to finding missing people in their native Mexico, but Emilia also wants Rita to stage a reunion with the unsuspecting wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez), and the children she left behind.
“There were gaps in my character’s arc that I needed to figure out as an actress to understand where she was going and coming from,” Gascón tells Harper’s Bazaar. “Many of them had to do with the real motive of her transition from Manitas to Emilia—if it was simply a question of wanting to escape from that [criminal] world, or if there was any depth to her need to become a woman, to become who she had always been. It was a key point that we needed to elucidate because it determined the kind of movie that this was going to be.”
To attempt to confine Emilia Pérez to a particular genre would be contrary to the film’s inherently ambitious nature. Focusing on the inner lives of Mexican women whose lives are marked by violence, the film is, at once, a gritty crime thriller, a soapy family melodrama, and an operatic musical. None of those big swings would have worked without the powerful performance of Gascón, a 52-year-old Spanish actress who has spent most of her career acting in Mexican telenovelas and transitioned six years ago in the public eye.
While she insists that her personal story is unlike that of her onscreen counterpart, Gascón worked so closely with Audiard to mold the character that even she, at times, wondered where Emilia ended and she began. “He was watching me and seeing what my virtues and defects were and putting them all together, so he could incorporate them into the film in the best possible way. I think this was a really wonderful process, for many different reasons, where I got to learn a lot and where they have also, I think, learned a lot from me in other ways,” Gascón says.
Since Emilia Pérez premiered in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where the four leading ladies—Gascón, Saldaña, Gomez and Adriana Paz—shared the prize for best actress, Gascón has been on a whirlwind international press tour. She is now in the throes of a monthslong awards campaign, with the goal of becoming the first openly trans actress to be nominated for an Academy Award.
Despite her hectic travel schedule, which is filled with post-screening Q&As and chance encounters with some of the biggest names in Hollywood, Gascón has taken her newfound stardom in stride. In conversation, she is ebullient and effervescent—a woman who has fought for her own vitality and can’t wait to share what she has learned along the way.
You’ve described your character as a bit like Beauty and the Beast trapped in the same body. How did your conversations with Jacques inform the way you approached your portrayals of Manitas and Emilia?
Jacques wanted these two stages of the character to be as different as possible. From this premise, it was easier to build them out. If they had been closer, different decisions would have been made. But having them be so far away from each other, you can build them out as two separate characters and start to pull them together by bringing things from one character into the other. It was interesting work because we had to make it clear that Manitas was Manitas at the beginning, completely different, but you also needed to see Emilia in there, and in Emilia you also had to be able to see Manitas.
I think we nailed it, especially—I remember this perfectly—when Jacques understood that Emilia was inside Manitas. It’s in that sequence where she tells Rita that she wants to be a woman, and I grab my hair and tuck it behind my ear. I think that’s one of the most beautiful and wonderful moments and makes it perfectly clear that in Manitas we have Emilia. And in Emilia, there’s also a lot of moments as well where we see Manitas, but the clearest moment is when she’s arguing with Jessi. I think that’s when we see Manitas come out. There’s even a slight voice change that happens.
Jacques originally planned to cast a cisgender male actor to play Emilia before her transition, but you were adamant about playing both versions of the character. Why was that important to you?
Because, as an actress, it would’ve been so ugly for me to say, “Give that character to someone else,” no? I don’t think I would’ve forgiven myself. If I had seen any other actor playing that part of the character, I would’ve felt terrible watching the film. Also, I think the film wouldn’t have made sense. Seeing somebody different, even if they had tried to find someone that physically looked like me, it would’ve been ugly to see how someone else stayed with part of my character’s soul. I think I would’ve had a problem with my ego. [Laughs.]
You’ve said that playing Emilia was actually more difficult than playing Manitas. How so?
Emilia was more difficult for me, precisely because she was closer to who I am. The closer characters are to me, the harder it is for me to play them, because I start to judge what’s happening onscreen a little bit like if it was me. I was not as free as when I was playing Manitas. I think that I had less freedom, psychologically, playing Emilia, because I wanted her to be perfect. And when you want to reach perfection, your own mind, your own taboos, start to kick in. But when you’re free and you don’t care, nothing matters to you like that. You allow things to flow, and in the end that’s a lot more beautiful. I personally liked the first part better. There’ll be others that prefer the second part. But for me, the first part of the character is more interesting. There’s more interest for me as a spectator than the second that’s more, let’s say, “normal.”
At the end of the day, the more freedom you have in the world—and I mean real freedom, not to be confused with debauchery. I think the more freedom you have to be able to create and exist in this world, you can do things a lot better and happier. When we have our own prejudices, they creep into what we’re doing. I’d start thinking, “Oh no, I don’t want it like this. I want my hair like this, because it’ll look more beautiful. I want Emilia to also have it like this, so she looks better onscreen too.” But with Manitas, he’s already so ugly—it didn’t matter what you did! [Laughs.]
You decided to transition publicly in your mid-40s, and you’ve spent the better part of the last decade attempting to rebuild your career while weathering intense scrutiny about your gender identity. That scrutiny will only intensify after this film launches on Netflix. How did you navigate the years immediately following your transition?
Honestly, really badly. It was a really hard time for me personally. We’re in a society that rejects people just because they’re different, because there’s fear. Fear makes it so that there’s rejection. There’s fear of the unknown. There’s a lot of mockery and bullying, a lot of hate in the world. I’ve had to face things that are still happening everyday. There’s a lot of people everywhere that think that I’m the most horrible thing there is; to a lot of people, at the moment, I’m public enemy number one.
So, I understand that’s something that has followed me, and is going to continue to follow me. But like a producer of mine in Mexico used to tell me, “You’re not a gold coin that can please everyone,” meaning to each with their own lives. If I hate you because you’re wearing a blue shirt [or for some other arbitrary reason], that’s my problem. I could hate you for wearing a blue shirt if blue just drives me nuts. Go bang your head against a wall, what can I say? [Laughs.]
There’s something I really love that I’ve tried to teach my daughter—and that’s to laugh at herself. I think it’s one of the best things you can do in life. If you take yourself too seriously, that’s when the problems start. The more we think about how absurd some of the things we say and do are—and through exaggeration and laughter, [the more] we can understand each other. Then, what’s better than just exaggerating? Would you hate someone who is wearing blue? No. Then why are you hating on me because I want to go about my life however I want? What’s the problem? It’s absurd.
Was your family immediately accepting of your decision to transition later in life?
Older people have a lot of prejudices. For me, they’ve always asked me about my daughter, how she was going to take [the news], and I always say, at the end of the day, children are always the most free. They don’t have any prejudices or anything like that. It is the adults that put prejudices in their heads. So when you’re free, the only thing you see is people just like you, that want to be happy, and you don’t judge them. As adults, we judge everyone else, because of our own experiences.
I’ve had to go through some tough moments. I’ve also had a lot of support from my family when they realized that perhaps they were wrong about a lot of things, and I think that’s how society works. At first, there’s a revolution, there’s a storm, and there’s calm after the storm. And then people start thinking, “There was no need for all this. Why did we create such a storm? What’s happening here?” But after one ends, there’s another storm, and another, and another. Life brings storms and calm to all human beings; we all have a lot of things happening in our lives that others may not like, but you have to go through them because they’re part of your journey.
To your point, the visibility of trans people is a double-edged sword; they want to be seen and recognized as their authentic selves, but this visibility also makes them increasingly vulnerable to violence. How do you hope the work that you’re doing on and off the screen will help with the acceptance of trans stories?
There’s one thing I hope for this world, and that is for us to wake up one day and be seen as just people with our virtues and faults. I keep saying the same thing: Being trans, LGBTQ, hetero, woman, man, young or old is not going to change how ignorant or intelligent you are. If you’re an imbecile, you’ll stay that way no matter what. And if you’re smart, then you’ll be that. What’s the only thing we can do? To try and think for ourselves and try to be better people, or try to understand people better. And if you’re an idiot, try not to meddle in other people’s lives; stay at home with your idiocy and do whatever you want.
I just want to wake up one day and for us to be treated like normal people, because that’s what we are, because there’s no such thing as “normal.” We’re all different. But [I hope] that there’s no one that is discriminated against because of their gender, or the color of their skin, or anything like that. That they can show up for work because they can do a good job, and not have to go into prostitution because someone wants to cast them out of society, do you get what I mean?
[I hope] that people can work in whatever they feel they’re called to do, and for them not to lose the chance to continue with their work, with their lives. There are astronauts that decide to change the color of their hair, and that doesn’t stop them from being astronauts. Why does a person that transitions or that has married someone of the same sex have to leave their job? Are they no longer as good an astronaut? Of course they are! What does one thing have to do with another? That’s what we are not understanding.
You could make history next year as the first openly trans actress to be nominated for an Oscar. What would that kind of recognition by your peers mean to you?
For me, the biggest recognition is being given the chance to participate in such a wonderful film and to have been able to pull off this character like I have. And with that, I can go to bed at night happy and say, “Hats off!” Anything that comes from the work I’ve done is welcome, and it will be an honor to share it. But personally, I think that there’s something really beautiful that’s happened—there’s a lot of people that wish for a part of the population [specifically trans people] to be recognized. And if I can make that happen in any way, I would feel very proud of having been able to contribute not just a grain of sand but a whole mound of hope to this planet.
How has making Emilia Pérez and playing this character changed your life, and what kinds of parts are you looking to play going forward?
Honestly, I think it has changed everything. But the most important thing is that I will no longer have to self-record casting videos. So that’s wonderful because I can avoid buying all this lighting for my phone and doing things just to be told, “No, thank you. It’s not going to work out.” [Laughs.] I’d love to get to do a mix of these types of dramatic characters and characters with more levity, because diving into such incredibly profound characters all the time is very, very difficult. So, if I’m asked to play a character in Ninja Turtles 3, I’d welcome it. I’d have a lot of fun with it! [Laughs.] I like to joke around, and I don’t like to take things too seriously. Whatever comes will be wonderful, and there’s already a lot of beautiful things coming.
This interview, which was conducted entirely in Spanish, has been translated and edited for length and clarity.
Emilia Pérez is now playing in select theaters, and will be available to stream on Netflix starting November 13.
You Might Also Like
