The Oscars turned out to be a pretty eventful night for the Emilia Pérez team, but not in the way they might have hoped. Instead of just celebrating their wins, a whole lot of attention ended up on Karla Sofía Gascón — and not for the reasons she’d want.
The 97th Academy Awards could’ve been a perfect night for the 2024 musical’s cast and crew. The film was nominated for a whopping 13 awards, with Zoë Saldaña taking home Best Supporting Actress and the movie itself winning Best Original Song.
Gascón also made history as the first transgender actress to ever be nominated for an acting Oscar. But with her old racist tweets recently resurfacing, the controversy that followed definitely put a damper on things.
The resurfaced tweet that reignited the controversy
What really had people talking, though, was Gascón and Selena Gomez’s first public interaction since the whole scandal blew up. One of Gascón’s alleged old tweets — now deleted — had her calling Gomez, who is 20 years younger than her, a “rich rat.”
Replying to a Spanish news post in October 2022, Gascón allegedly wrote: “She’s a rich rat who plays the poor b*stard whenever she can and will never stop bothering her ex-boyfriend and his wife,” in an apparent reference to Justin and Hailey Bieber.
Gascón denies the accusations but issues an apology
Gascón denied all the accusations, including claims that she had posted racist and Islamophobic remarks, but still ended up apologizing.
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Speaking to CNN, she said: “It’s not mine, of course. I have never said anything about my colleague I would never refer to her that way.
“I am neither racist nor anything that all these people have tried to make others believe I am.”
Selena Gomez reacts to the controversy
After all this went down, Gomez opened up to PEOPLE about how the situation affected her. She admitted that the whole thing had taken away some of the excitement she originally felt about the film.
“I’m good. I’m really good. Some of the magic has disappeared, but I choose to continue to be proud of what I’ve done, and I’m just grateful,” she said.
“I live with no regrets and I would do this movie over and over again if I could.”
The first face-to-face encounter since the scandal
For the first time since everything went down, Gomez and Gascón came face-to-face at the Dolby Theater on March 2.
Gascón, who decided to skip the red carpet to avoid the media storm, walked up to Gomez — who was sitting with her fiancé Benny Blanco — and said a quick hello.
Gomez stood up, gave her co-star a pretty awkward kiss on the cheek, and then Gascón shook Blanco’s hand before walking away.
The moment caught on camera fuels further speculation
The whole interaction was caught on camera, and naturally, people on social media had a lot to say about it. The body language, the expressions — it all just added more fuel to the ongoing drama.
Conan O’Brien jokes about the controversy during his skit
Later in the night, Conan O’Brien couldn’t resist poking fun at the situation during his skit.
“Anora uses the ‘F-word’ 479 times — that’s three more than the record set by Karla Sofía Gascón’s publicist,” he joked to the audience, before brushing it off as “incredibly silly.”
Then he added, “Karla Sofía Gascón is here tonight — and Karla, if you are going to tweet about the Oscars… my name is Jimmy Kimmel.”
