Emilia Pérez actress Karla Sofía Gascón apologises for offensive tweets, deactivates X account

Karla Sofía Gascón at a press conference for Emilia Pérez in Mexico City on January 15. Photo / Getty Images

The Oscar-nominated star of Emilia Pérez said she was “deeply sorry to those I have caused pain” after denigrating black people and Muslims.

Karla Sofía Gascón, the Oscar-nominated star of Emilia Pérez, has deactivated her X (formerly Twitter) account and apologised after social media posts she made disparaging George Floyd, Islam and a previous Academy Award ceremony resurfaced this week.

“As someone in a marginalised community, I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain,” Gascón said in a statement shared to media outlets by Netflix, the streaming platform for her movie. “All my life I have fought for a better world. I believe light will always triumph over darkness.”

After Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis in 2020 by a white police officer, causing nationwide outrage and Black Lives Matter protests, Gascón took to Twitter, calling Floyd a “crooked junkie” in Spanish and using disrespectful phrasing to refer to black people.

“I really think very few people ever cared for George Floyd ... But his death was useful to show again that there are some who consider black people monkeys without rights and others who consider the police are killers. Both are wrong,” she wrote.

She also made at least a dozen Islamophobic tweets over the years, calling for a ban of the religion that she said went against European values and violated human rights. In another post, she said that Islam was “an infection for humanity that urgently needs to be cured”. She also used a racial slur to describe Muslims in Spain, her native country, and criticised how Muslim women dress.

The cast of Emilia Pérez at the Golden Globe Awards in January: (from left): Adriana Paz, Edgar Ramírez, Selena Gomez, Jacques Audiard, Karla Sofía Gascón and Zoe Saldana. Photo / Getty Images

The offending tweets stirred up controversy after journalist Sarah Hagi took screenshots and shared many of them, saying that “straight up, have never seen tweets this racist from someone actively campaigning to win an ACADEMY AWARD”.

“This is all from the star of a movie that is campaigning on its progressive values, you really gotta laugh,” Hagi added.

According to a tweet seen by Variety, Gascón also spoke poorly of the 2021 Oscars ceremony: “More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films, I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M,” the actress reportedly wrote in Spanish, referencing a feminist strike. “Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala.”

it’s so insane that karla sofía gascón still has these tweets up. straight up have never seen tweets this racist from someone actively campaigning to win an ACADEMY AWARD. there are more than a dozen… pic.twitter.com/1rcNzkJXuo

— sarah hagi (@KindaHagi) January 30, 2025

Gascón deleted the posts after the backlash and as of Friday had deactivated her entire X account.

Earlier this month, Gascón was nominated for a best actress Oscar, becoming the first out trans actress to be nominated in an acting category.

She won Cannes Film Festival’s best actress award last year along with her co-stars, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz. Gascón was also nominated for a Golden Globe this year, but lost to Demi Moore for The Substance.

In the musical movie Emilia Pérez, Gascón plays a Mexican cartel leader who gets help from a lawyer to transition to being a woman. The movie received 13 Oscar nominations, including for best picture.