Zoe Saldaña is getting candid regarding her “Emilia Pérez” co-star Karla Sofía Gascón, amid controversy surrounding recently resurfaced tweets.
Saldaña appeared on Variety’s “Awards Circuit” podcast Wednesday, where she shared her feelings toward Gascón after reading the offensive posts.
“I’m sad. Time and time again, that’s the word because that is the sentiment that has been living in my chest since everything happened,” Saldaña told Variety. “I’m also disappointed. I can’t speak for other people’s actions. All I can attest to is my experience, and never in a million years did I ever believe that we would be here.”
In a series of years-old, since-deleted tweets, Gascón bemoaned the immigration of Muslims in her native Spain, invoked Hitler to make a point about inequality, and spoke out against diversity at the Academy Awards.
One of her posts about the 2021 Oscars read, “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. Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala.”
Meanwhile, in a post shared just days after George Floyd was killed by a police officer in 2020, she wrote, “I really think that very few people ever cared about George Floyd, a drug addict swindler, but his death has served to once again demonstrate that there are people who still consider Black people to be monkeys without rights and consider policemen to be assassins. They’re all wrong.”
In the wake of the tweets coming to light, criticism quickly poured out for the 52-year-old Best Actress nominee, the first openly transgender performer ever nominated for an acting Oscar.
But despite the backlash Gascón has received, Saldaña, who won a Golden Globe for her performance in “Emilia Pérez,” says she remains “proud” of the work they created together in the genre-defying film.
“I will always be a hopeful person,” Saldaña told Variety. “I was not raised to have any negative judgment towards people of any group in any community. While being that person, I can still stand by a body of work that I can be proud of.”
Her comments come after the film’s director, Jacques Audiard, condemned Gascón’s remarks, calling them “inexcusable.”
“I haven’t spoken to her, and I don’t want to,” Audiard said in an interview with Deadline. “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? … She’s talking about herself as a victim, which is surprising. It’s as if she thought that words don’t hurt.”
Last week, Gascón issued a statement apologizing for the tweets, while also defending herself as an advocate for “each and every one of the minorities in this world.”
“I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt,” she said in the statement to Variety. “As someone in a marginalized 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.”
Amid the controversy, the Spanish actress said she has received death threats and been “abused and harassed to the point of exhaustion.” She also said she’s not responsible for her words being taken out of context nor how others interpret what she says.
Sources told Variety that Netflix is has now stopped talking to Gascón directly, communicating only through her agent at UTA.