The irony is that, because Gascón is trans, and the film offers a sympathetic, nuanced portrayal of a trans protagonist, part of the film’s appeal to voters was that it seemed so progressive. But there is nothing progressive about the anti-diversity content of her posts. “Emilia Pérez’s chances are strongly linked to its liberal credentials,” says Ed Potton, an arts editor at The Times. “Once those are lost, they’ll be hard to regain.”
On Friday, Gascón released a statement saying that she was “deeply sorry to those I have caused pain”, but the damage is done. “She was always an outside chance for best actress,” says Ide. “But I would now be very surprised if Emilia Pérez won best picture, and this time last week it felt like a strong contender.”
As Ide says, the reverberations of Gascón’s social media posts may not just demolish Gascón’s chances of winning an Oscar – Emilia Pérez’s hopes in other categories may crumble, too. Could this be the first case of a scandal dashing a film’s best picture dreams in the final furlong of the race? “I actually didn’t think Emilia Pérez would win best picture, anyway, but that’s definitely not going to happen now,” says Patrick Heidmann, a film journalist on Berliner Zeitung. “For best international feature, I’m Still Here is now the favourite. The only other question is how and if [Gascón’s co-star] Zoe Saldaña will get dragged down by this. She was 100% going to win best supporting actress, but maybe Isabella Rossellini and Ariana Grande can now hope again.”
Saldaña responded to the controversy around her co-star at a Q&A event for the film in London on Friday night, saying: “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.”
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Whatever happens, there is already a danger that the off-screen narratives relating to this year’s Oscar nominees might overshadow the stories in the films themselves. This week, Torres apologised for wearing blackface in a Brazilian comedy sketch almost 20 years ago. A couple of weeks ago, the makers of The Brutalist admitted that AI was used to generate some architectural blueprints and to tweak the actors’ Hungarian pronunciation – not a good look for a film that has been celebrated for being an artistic labour of love made by a defiantly independent director. (AI was also used, incidentally, to improve Gascón’s singing voice in Emilia Pérez.) Meanwhile, several nominees have been tainted by accusations of so-called “category fraud”: some commentators have asked whether Saldaña and Grande should have been nominated for best supporting actress in Emilia Pérez and Wicked, respectively, and whether Kieran Culkin should have had a best supporting actor nod for A Real Pain, when all three performers could be more accurately described as co-leads. And Mikey Madison, the star of Anora, was hit by a backlash when she said that she chose not to use an intimacy co-ordinator when filming the sex scenes.
None of this is new. Rather than winning or losing Academy Awards on the basis of quality alone, films and actors are always affected by outside factors. When Paul Newman won the best actor Oscar for The Color of money in 1987, it was largely due to Hollywood’s warm and fuzzy feelings towards a beloved Tinseltown icon. At the other extreme, after Mickey Rourke was recorded using a homophobic slur against a journalist in late-2008, it was no surprise that he didn’t win the best actor Oscar for The Wrestler in 2009: Sean Penn won it instead for playing Harvey Milk, the gay rights activist, in Milk.
