Resurfaced offensive tweets have thrown star’s Oscar campaign into turmoil. Karla Sofía Gascón, the Oscar-nominated star of Emilia Perez, broke down in tears during an emotional interview addressing the recent controversy over resurfaced social media posts. The 52-year-old actor is in contention for Best Actress at the Academy Awards, for her role as a transgender crime boss in the polarising Netflix musical. However, in the past week, her awards campaign has been derailed by mounting backlash to a number of offensive tweets she made over the past five years, including posts about George Floyd, Islam and diversity at the Oscars.

Gascón had previously issued multiple apologies for the posts, and had deleted her account on X/Twitter. During an hour-long interview with CNN en Español, Gascón broke down in tears as she answered questions about her social media history, telling interviewer Juan Carlos Arciniegas that she was “not a racist”. Asked if she would renounce her Oscar nomination – the first ever awarded to an openly transgender actor – she said: "I cannot renounce a nomination because what I have done is a job and what is being valued is my acting work.” (Per a translation by THR.).

“I cannot step down from an Oscar nomination because I have not committed any crime nor have I harmed anyone,” she continued. “I am neither racist nor anything that all these people have tried to make others believe I am.". She addressed the tweet about Floyd, whose murder by a white police officer in 2020 spawned the Black Lives Matter movement. Gascón had described Floyd as a “drug addict and a hustler” in a tweet, writing that “his death has served to highlight once again that there are those who still consider Black people to be monkeys without rights and those who consider the police to be murderers. All wrong.”.

Speaking to CNN, Gascón said that her tweet had been misinterpreted: "He was a person who had been in a very difficult situation in his life and no one had helped him, and suddenly he becomes a symbol of a cause and everyone loved him. "But for someone to think that … I have ever insulted a person because of their skin colour, I do not allow that to anyone, to anyone.”. In regard to several tweets that have been condemned as Islamophobic, Gascón said she had been voicing criticism of radical Islam, and had not caused harm to anyone.

She said she had a relationship with a Muslim woman "whom I adore, whom I love and who has taught me so much about respect for people". The actor offered her “most sincere apologies to all the people who may have felt offended for the way I express myself in my past, in my present and in my future”, before also stating: “I believe I have been judged, I have been convicted and sacrificed and crucified and stoned without a trial and without the option to defend myself.”.

While many of the offensive tweets currently circulating online were real, some – including a post in which Gascón describes her Emilia Perez co-star Selena Gomez as a “rich rat” – are faked. "It’s not mine, of course," Gascón said, of the Gomez tweet. "I have never said anything about my colleague I would never refer to her that way.". She claimed that people "have dedicated themselves to searching, to put together all the things that I had said at a time that I had written, most of which are false … most of them I don’t even recognise that I wrote them. And they put them all together and so it seems that she is a very bad person and we remove her [from the Oscar race] just when we can do the most damage, right in the voting period.".

Gascón added that she “doesn’t give a damn about awards”. "What I do care about is the people that I represent, because of what I represent in this world," she said. "We can all change and be better people in this world.". According to Deadline, the interview took place without the involvement of Netflix, which distributed Emilia Perez. Gascón previously told The Independent in a statement: “I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt.

“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.”. Emilia Perez is up for 13 awards at this year’s Oscars, with Gascón’s co-star Zoe Saldana currently the favourite to win Best Supporting Actress. Saldana was asked about Gascón’s controversy during a Q&A in London last week.

“I’m still processing everything that has transpired in the last couple of days, and I’m sad,” she said. “It makes me really sad because I don’t support [it], and I 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 was a part, that is a part, of this film, and my experience and my interactions with them was about inclusivity and collaboration and racial, cultural and gender equity. And it just saddens me.”.