Why Is ‘Emilia Perez’ Controversial? A Timeline.

When the 2025 Oscars nominations are finally announced after delays, Emilia Pérez is expected to rack ’em up. The Spanish-language French film led the Oscars shortlist, won four Golden Globes, and has three SAG nominations, including Best Ensemble. But throughout, there has been an undercurrent of controversy. Following a drug lord who transitions and tries to undo the harm her past life inflicted, Emilia Pérez was written and directed, in Spanish, by a man who speaks no Spanish. The film has been criticized for its portrayal of Mexico, its trans representation, and even the accents of its actors.

Below, a timeline of the controversies following Emilia Pérez on its camino to the Oscars, including Karla Sofía Gascón’s resurfaced tweets (and Zoë Saldaña’s response to them).

May 25, 2024: Emilia Pérez wins the Jury Prize at Cannes. Adriana Paz, Zoë Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, and Selena Gomez win Best Actress collectively.

October 2024: Karla Sofía Gascón tells Rolling Stone that it was a “difficult job” mastering the Mexican accent, especially in France, where she doesn’t have the added gift of immersion. “Every Mexican I’ve met, except the one sitting in front of me, has said that my accent was impressive,” she said. “If I were to speak in my typical accent to you, you’d die.”

November 14, 2024: A clip of director Jacques Audiard circulates on Twitter, in which he says he “didn’t study much” about Mexico. “I kinda already knew what I had to understand,” he says.

November 15, 2024: GLAAD rounds up criticism that the film is poor representation for trans people, calling it “profoundly retrograde.” They quote PinkNews’ Amelia Hansford, who writes that Emilia Pérez is “sub-par, disingenuous, harmful nonsense,” as well as the Cut’s Harron Walker, who critiques the unrealistic depictions of gender-affirmation surgery, saying the film “displayed an understanding of plastic surgery that’s about as refined as McG’s recent Uglies.”

November 24, 2024: Mexican cinematographer and Pedro Páramo director Rodrigo Prieto tells Deadline he was “offended” by the film’s lack of authenticity. “First of all, I’m unhappy that the film was not shot in Mexico,” he says. “Secondly, why wouldn’t you include more Mexican people to participate in the production? Why not hire a Mexican production designer, costume designer, or at least some consultants? Yes, they had dialogue coaches, but I was offended that such a story was portrayed in a way that felt so inauthentic.” Prieto mentions one specific detail that rubbed him the wrong way: “You would never have a jail sign that read ‘Cárcel,’ it would be ‘Penitenciaria.’”

December 5, 2024: Mexican comedian Eugenio Derbez calls Selena Gomez’s accent in the film “indefensible” on the Hablando de Cine Con podcast. Host Gaby Meza agrees, adding, “I feel like she doesn’t know what she’s saying. If she doesn’t know what she’s saying, she can’t give her acting any nuance.”

Gomez comments on the TikTok, writing, “I understand where you are coming from … I’m sorry I did the best I could with the time I was given.” Gomez spoke Spanish as a child but lost facility with the language once she started acting in English. Earlier in the year, Gomez said relearning Spanish for the role was “wonderful. The experience was in a way reconnecting. I’m grateful for it. If anything, I hope this isn’t [the] last thing I do in Spanish.”

Derbez issues an apology on social media. “Dear Selena, I truly apologize for my careless comments — they are indefensible and go against everything I stand for,” he writes. “As Latinos, we should always support one another. There’s no excuse. I was wrong, and I deeply admire your career and your heart.”

December 9, 2024: Casting director Carla Hool says her team “did a big search” for Mexican actors but didn’t find any actors suitable for the main roles. Zoë Saldaña is American of Dominican and Puerto Rican heritage, Karla Sofía Gascón is Spanish, and Selena Gomez is Mexican American. “So we had to figure out how to adjust authenticity … with the accents, and them not necessarily being native Mexican.”

January 5, 2025: Emilia Pérez wins four Golden Globes, including Best Picture — Musical/Comedy and Best Supporting Actress for Zoë Saldaña. The wins come under criticism for category fraud (for Saldaña), overly emotional speeches (again, Saldaña), and not enough discussion of trans rights (all speeches).

People share the gender-affirming surgery scene, reigniting the trans representation debate.

And more Mexican writers and actors criticize the film for an othering, inaccurate view of Mexico.

January 10, 2025: Adriana Paz, who plays Emilia’s lover Epifanía, defends the movie’s depiction of Mexico. Paz is one of the few Mexican actors in the film and shared the joint Best Actress award at Cannes. “I’ve heard people saying it’s offensive to Mexico. I really want to know why, because I didn’t feel that way. And I have questioned some people that I trust, not just as artists but as people, and they don’t feel that way, so I am trying to understand,” she tells IndieWire. “The first time that I saw it, I told Jacques, ‘You’re a genius.’”

“I told him the very first time that I saw him, ‘This is controversial, Jacques. It’s like, you can do bad things and then you can do good things, and you’re a saint,’” Paz says, referring to the film’s final scene, which implies Pérez achieves sainthood via her transition. “But also, everyone has a good and a bad side. There’s a lot of sicarios in Mexico that didn’t want to be sicarios; they were kidnapped by criminals when they were just kids, and they ended up in these criminalistic pacts. Are they bad? I mean, yes, but they are also the result of a history of violence and corruption. And maybe some of them wanted to try to change.”

January 21, 2025: In an interview with Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, Karla Sofía Gascón claims the team surrounding I’m Still Here and its star, Fernanda Torres, are conducting a smear campaign against Gascón and Emilia Pérez. “What I don’t like are social-media teams — people who work with these people — trying to diminish our work, like me and my movie, because that doesn’t lead anywhere,” she says, translated from Spanish by Variety. “You don’t need to tear down someone’s work to highlight another’s. I have never, at any point, said anything bad about Fernanda Torres or her movie. However, there are people working with Fernanda Torres tearing me and Emilia Pérez down. That speaks more about their movie than mine.” In a statement to Variety, Gascón said she wasn’t referring to people in direct contact with Torres but rather against “toxicity and violent hate speech on social media.”

January 24, 2025: Mexican filmmaker Camila Aurora releases an “homage” film to Emilia Pérez called Johanne Sacrebleu. The film is a T4T Romeo & Juliet riff, with trans baguette heiress Johanne Sacrebleu falling for trans croissant heir Agtugo Ratatouille. How can these crazy kids find their peace surrounded by the endless war between patisserie and boulangerie? Most of the French people depicted are mimes and/or piloted by rats à la Ratatouille.

January 30, 2025: Writer Sarah Hagi compiles screenshots of racist, Islamophobic, xenophobic, and all-around hateful tweets made by Karla Sofía Gascón dating back years, along with their English translations (via Google Translate) from the original Spanish. In these tweets, ranging from 2016 to 2023, Gascón refers to Muslims with incendiary, derogatory language, and endorses the expulsion of Muslim immigrants from European nations, often using a shrug emoji. “How many times will we have to expel these madmen from Europe until we realize that their religion is INCOMPATIBLE with Western values,” she asks in one tweet. “How many more times will history have to expel the Moors from Spain …” she writes in another.

Gascón’s (then-Twitter) account has additional offensive posts, including an insensitive thread from June 2020 about George Floyd.

Later that same day, Gascón releases a statement apologizing for her posts: “I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt. 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.”

Still, more of her past tweets continue to circulate online, including one about the 2021 Oscars in which she says that she didn’t know if she was “watching an Afro-Korean festival” or “a Black Lives Matter demonstration.” In another resurfaced post, Gascón tweeted during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 that the “Chinese vaccine, apart from the mandatory chip, comes with a cat that moves its hand, 2 plastic flowers, a pop-up lantern, 3 telephone lines and one euro for your first controlled purchase.”

January 31, 2024: Karla Sofía Gascón deactivates her X account and explains the decision in a statement that she says was sent “between tears” to The Hollywood Reporter. “I can no longer allow this campaign of hate and misinformation to affect me and my family, so at their request I am closing my account on X,” she writes, adding that she has received death threats.

Expanding on her previous apology, Gascón maintains that she supports all minorities, freedom of religion, and “any action against” racism and homophobia. “I am a human being who also made, makes and will make mistakes from which I will learn. I am not perfect,” she says in the new statement. “Taking my words out of context or manipulating them to hurt me is something I am not responsible for.” The actress expresses her desire to provide “a more extensive explanation” in the future. While she apologizes to anyone she has offended, she also suggests that there is “something very dark behind” the backlash. “The more you try to sink me, the stronger it will make me. The greater the victory will be,” she declares.

Gascón does not appear as scheduled at an Emilia Pérez Q&A in London. At the event, Zoë Saldaña acknowledges her co-star’s controversial resurfaced tweets. “I’m still processing everything that has transpired in the last couple of days, and I’m sad,” she says, per The Hollywood Reporter. Saldaña notes that she’s upset because she doesn’t support or tolerate “any negative rhetoric towards people of any group,” adding, “I can only attest to the experience that I had with each and every individual that was a part, that is a part, of this film, and my experience and my interactions with them was about inclusivity and collaboration and racial, cultural, and gender equity.”

After again expressing sadness about “having to face this setback,” Saldaña said she’s pleased that people are still showing up for Emilia Pérez, affirming her belief that the film has a powerful message and can bring forward “important” change to marginalized communities. “And all that I can attest is that all of us that came together to tell this story, we came together for love and for respect and curiosity, and we will continue to spread that message,” she concludes. “That’s all we can say right now.”