Karla Sofia Gascon is touted to become the first transgender person to win an Academy Award, if she gets nominated in the Best Actress category at Oscars 2025 for her role in Jacques Audiard’s Spanish musical crime comedy Emilia Perez. In an interview to The Hollywood Reporter, Karla opened up on the enormous and vitriolic hate she receives online. (Also Read: All We Imagine As Light stumbles at the last hurdle as Emilia Perez wins Best Non-English Film at Golden Globes 2025)
What Karla said
“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,” Karla said. “I love it. It’s my gasoline to then tell the people of the light: ‘You have won.’ The more people hate me, the more insulting messages they send, the more I say, ‘Thank you,’ and the more I’m going to enjoy this moment,” she added.
Karla revealed that the hate she receives online also includes death threats, such as “I hope you die before you make another movie” or being told that she will be “found dismembered in a bag.” She said she’s the ”public enemy number one right now in the world for many people.” Karla said she’s gotten used to the hate and has, in fact, developed a “taste for revenge.”
About Emilia Perez
Directed by Jacques Audiard, Emilia Perez led the nominations heading into the Golden Globe Awards ceremony this year, with a record-breaking 10 nominations, surpassing Barbie’s nine nominations from the previous year. It defeated Wicked to win the final award of the evening – Best Picture – Musical or Comedy – cementing its place in Golden Globe history.
Karla delivered a powerful acceptance speech that moved the audience. “You can maybe put us in jail, you can beat us up, but you never can take away our soul, our existence, our identity,” Gascon said, affirming the film’s central message, adding, “I am who I am, not who you want.”
Emilia Perez also claimed other major honours, including Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language, where it triumphed over films like The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Vermiglio, and India’s own, All We Imagine As Light. The film’s song ‘El Mal’ won Best Original Song – Motion Picture, with music and lyrics by Clement Ducol, Camille, and Jacques Audiard. Other notable winners included Zoe Saldana, who won Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture for Emilia Perez.
