Karla Sofía Gascón: The Voice of Reason Amidst the Hate
Karla Sofía Gascón reads the hate. All of it. While receiving praise for her lead performance in the late-breaking Oscar favorite Emilia Pérez, she has also faced a flood of vitriol on social media. When meeting in Madrid, Gascón shows me messages she has screenshotted and marked up. “I hope you die before you make another movie,” one user spewed. After beloved Spanish actress Marisa Paredes passed away, another anonymous online wit mused, “I wish you could have died instead of her.” The backlash has also targeted her in Mexico, where she has spent much of her career. “I was told I would be found dismembered in a bag.”
As the first transgender performer to be nominated for an Oscar, Gascón is poised to make history. Not since Moonlight has an Academy Award front-runner been so well-suited to trigger Donald Trump’s base. A Mexican cartel kingpin named Manitas (Gascón) hires a careerist corporate lawyer (Zoe Saldaña) to help him transition to a new life as a woman, fake his death, and resettle his wife (Selena Gomez) and kids in Switzerland. And it’s a musical.
The undisguised transphobia that became a pillar of Trump’s second presidential campaign is a global phenomenon, Gascón notes, one that has grown in proportion to the cultural progress of trans issues. “There is a part of society that lives off hate, that lives off selling hate, and there is another part that wants to live in hope, with the same rights, all of us in peace and respect,” she says. “I always see it as a struggle between light and dark.”
Gascón has developed a taste for revenge, she reveals, and the more hate mail she receives, the more she relishes the moment. Her response is simple: “I would take everything they send as fuel to tell the people of the light: ‘You have won.'”
As the 52-year-old actress arrived on a high-octane Yamaha MT-07 motorcycle from her Madrid suburb home, where she lives with her wife of 30 years, Marisa Gutierrez, and their 14-year-old daughter, Victoria, she showed me a picture she took of an Emilia Pérez poster on the side of a newsstand. Above the faces of Gascón and co-stars Saldaña and Gomez is the name of the vendor: Good News. “It’s a promising omen, no?”
Gascón has already made history by winning the best actress prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, which she shared with Saldaña, Gomez, and Adriana Paz. The victory prompted a reactionary backlash in France, most notably from far-right politician Marion Maréchal, niece of National Rally standard-bearer Marine Le Pen and granddaughter of the movement’s late founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen. “So a man has won best actress,” Maréchal tweeted. “Progress for the left means the erasure of women and mothers.” Gascón wasted no time in counterpunching, suing Maréchal over a “sexist insult on the basis of gender identity.” “It’s with the lawyers now,” she says. “It’s going to be a long process.” She plans to give any indemnities to trans rights organizations.
Emilia Pérez was filmed mostly in a Paris studio, and Gascón spent the months-long shoot in self-exile, declining invitations to socialize with the cast and crew, including one outing to a Beyoncé concert. “I was lonely because I had no one,” she says. “No family, nothing. The truth is that it was very good for the character, but it was very bad for me.”
When production wrapped, Gascón shared a photo on Facebook of her at dinner with her beaming castmates Saldaña, Gomez, and Édgar Ramírez. “Forgive me for my desperation,” she wrote. “For how much of a beast I can be in life. It was a luxury to share the screen with each one of you. A true privilege.” Gomez says Gascón had no reason to apologize for her stubborn dedication to character. On the contrary, “I thought that [her method] actually helped me. I was scared to take this project on. I was a mess. We had really powerful moments where we would both just feel tender and personal.”
Gascón has predicted that she will continue to take on a variety of projects, including a dark Spanish-language fairy tale directed by the Academy Award-winning co-writer of Birdman, Armando Bó. She is already fielding offers from major studios and has even been asked to work with Pedro Almodóvar. Her daughter, Victoria, is also showing interest in the film industry.
The kind of scrutiny that comes with success can be daunting, and Gascón has faced criticism from both the right and left. However, she is fueled by the love and support she receives from fans and advocates. “I love it,” she says. “I’m glad to have this platform. I’m glad to be here.”
