The most hated man in Mexico, Jacques Audiard, is distancing himself from his embattled “Emilia Perez” star Karla Sofía Gascón, amid the implosion of her Oscar campaign after racist and controversial tweets resurfaced.
In an interview with Deadline, Audiard states that he doesn’t want to talk to Gascón, called his star’s recent behavior “self-destructive.”
I haven’t spoken to her, and I don’t want to. 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.
Audiard goes on to claim how Gascón “hurt people who worked incredibly hard on the film,” and that he just doesn’t “understand why she’s continuing to harm us.”
The filmmaker’s comments come less than 24 hours after ‘Emilia’ actress Zoe Saldana also distanced herself from Gascón. In fact, Netflix, who is backing the film, is now ghosting Gascón and refusing to pay for the actress’ accommodation at any awards shows, and that could very well also include the Oscars in which Gascón is nominated for Best Actress.
We should also not fail to mention that Audiard is embroiled in his own controversy, having had to apologize to Mexicans for making “Emilia Perez,” but then, just a few weeks later, dealing with resurfaced video in which he called Spanish the language of the “poor.”
The drama behind “Emilia Perez” has greatly benefited “The Brutalist,” the current de fact best picture frontrunner, which was itself in the middle of an AI controversy and most recently had one of it stars, Guy Pearce, admitting that, many years ago, he wanted to punch an actress who mocked his work on a soap opera.
I don’t know about you, but this is a lot of fun to follow, and it paints a damning portrait of not just hypocrisy in Hollywood, but the total ridiculousness of awards campaigning and watching.