This Karla Sofia Gascon mess has now dominated the Oscar race for the past week. She should have never opened her mouth to disrespect Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres, because that seems to be the inciting incident for everything. Brazilian fandoms are no joke, and they have the power to make or break a person. To be fair, it’s bonkers to me that no one at Netflix and no one associated with Emilia Perez even did a cursory examination of Gascon’s social media history. Part of me believes that the lack of oversight was because Gascon tweets in Spanish, her native language, and Netflix couldn’t be bothered to hit “translate” on her insanely bigoted, racist, offensive and inflammatory tweets.

In any case, Gascon has now deleted her account and she’s still issuing ham-fisted apologies in which she lies about when she was tweeting hate, and she’s also still claiming that people are waging a hate campaign against her (they’re merely translating her hateful tweets). To be clear, the dust has not settled on any of this, mostly because Gascon continues to try to talk/lie her way out of it. Every day, there’s a new faux-apology or new lie or new interview. Netflix can’t get her to shut up and their damage control has gone nowhere. So what does this do to the Oscar race? From Scott Feinberg’s column in the Hollywood Reporter:

One can speculate that the exposure of Gascón’s tweets, and the timing of it, was not entirely organic. And one can also argue that Emilia Pérez distributor Netflix, with its deep pockets and dozens of people working specifically on awards efforts, should have caught them before investing millions into an Oscar campaign for a film with her at its center; after all, a similar situation, albeit involving just a single tweet, almost derailed the Oscar prospects of another divisive film, Green Book, six years ago. But the bottom line, of course, is that Gascón did this to herself.

Beyond that, there is this: one doesn’t have to like Emilia Pérez to recognize that Gascón gave a courageous and daring performance in the film, and that her awards season success represented hope and progress for a lot of other people. Under different circumstances, she would have gone on to be celebrated at the Oscars, win or lose, and would have eventually wound up on a wall at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, described as a trailblazer alongside the likes of Sidney Poitier and Kathryn Bigelow.

But now, as a result of her behavior, her chances of winning the best actress Oscar, which were mixed to begin with, have been extinguished, and it’s possible that the same can be said for her future in the business altogether. And she has also severely damaged the Oscar prospects of her film — which was arguably the frontrunner for the best picture Oscar, having received a field-leading 13 nominations, just one shy of the all-time record — and, most unfairly of all, the prospects of her colleagues who were also nominated for the film, including Saldaña, who has been the best supporting actress frontrunner for months. Based on my conversations in recent days with Academy members, many are going to have a hard time voting for Emilia Pérez in any category, given that Emilia Pérez herself has become toxic.

[From THR]

Feinberg also notes that Karla’s scandal feels unique in the history of Oscar-campaign scandals and dirty tricks. While other Oscar campaigns have gotten dirty, Oscar voters ultimately reward dirty tactics most of the time. This situation is unique because it’s not really the work of a competing Oscar contender, it’s a situation which exploded on social media via Brazilian fans amplifying Karla’s hateful tweets, and those tweets being independently exposed by an independent Canadian culture writer. Plus, the situation is unique because of Karla’s many unforced errors – she’s done this all to herself, from tweeting hate for years, to lying about it when she was exposed, and on and on. I’m glad that this catastrophe is affecting the entire race and I hope Emilia Perez loses in every category.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.