Yahoo Lifestyle Zoe Saldaña Breaks Silence On Racist Tweets From 'Emilia Pérez' Co-Star Karla Sofía Gascón
Zoe Saldaña is “sad” about the dust-up over Karla Sofía Gascón’s old racist social media post, but she isn’t throwing her “Emilia Pérez” co-star under the bus.
“I’m still processing everything that has transpired in the last couple of days, and I’m sad,” Saldaña said during a Q&A session in London on Friday, per The Hollywood Reporter. “It makes me really sad because I don’t support and don’t have any tolerance for any negative rhetoric towards people of any group.”
“I can only attest to the experience that I had with each and every individual that is a part of this film, and my experience and interactions with them was incredibly about inclusivity and collaboration and racial, cultural and gender equity,” she added. “And it just saddens me.”Gascón appeared anything but inclusive in the racist, Islamophobic and antisemitic posts on X, formerly Twitter, that
Journalist Sara Hagi discovered Gascón’s history of racist, Islamophobic and antisemitic posts on Thursday, days after Gascón became the first openly trans person to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar.
While some of the since-deleted posts dated to 2016, she’d made others as recently as 2023.
On X, formerly Twitter, Gascón had denigrated Black people and Muslims, and called George Floyd — the Black man murdered by Minneapolis police in 2020 — “a drug addict and a scammer,” per an online translation.
Gascón has since deleted her X account and apologized in a statement to The Associated Press. But she reportedly argued Saturday on Instagram in Spanish that she’s been “condemned without a trial” and that her critics “have already won” in tarnishing her.
The scandal arrived at an unfortunate time for the rest of the “Emilia Pérez” team, who earned a combined 13 Oscar nominations last month.
“It saddens me that we are having to face this setback right now,” Saldaña, who received her first-ever Oscars nod for the film, said at Friday’s Q&A, per THR.
She continued, “But I’m happy that you’re all here and that you’re all still showing up for ‘Emilia,’ because the message that this film has is so powerful and the change it can bring forward to communities that are marginalized day in and day out is important.”
