Comedian Hank Chen invited me to an Emilia Pérez for your consideration screening in Hollywood, on a rainy night, and having already seen Emilia on Netflix at home, I put on my all-weather cycle gear and rode two-and-a-half miles in a downpour to be Chen’s plus one.
This screening came a few days after the lead actress, Karla Sofía Gascón, made headlines for all of the wrong reasons and already, it seemed, L.A. industry people were wondering, “Is it still OK to be seen watching this movie in public?”
As a trans and intersex creative in Hollywood my feelings about this are complex: a mix of disgust and shock that she would say these awful things and great disappointment that this beautiful, strong heroine — one we trans people so need right now — is dragging on feet of clay.
Looking around the (not capacity) audience I’m the only trans person I can see. Although, since Jan. 20, many of us are deleting our social media posts and “going stealth.”
Sadly, for Gascón and Netflix, stealth mode hadn’t been activated by the time Emila Pérez’s break out rising star hit the mainstream.
Gascón is the first out and proud trans person to be Oscar-nominated in an acting category. Cannes success catapulted her into the limelight, where she was basking in a global LGBTQiA+ community celebration of #TransJoy, for a few short days.
Controversial take, in LA trans community, doubly so now: I love Emilia Pérez! And I’m not a huge musicals guy.
However, I’ve only been a dude since 2018. Before that I was a pretty blonde lesbian. Maybe now that I’m an intersex queer man, musicals will become a thing?
I really wanted to see this record-breaking (13 Oscar nominations, for a foreign language film) musical/crime/comedy genre-blender again, as this is a movie that demands a theater viewing, an Academy silver screen, with amazing sound, in a room full of creative, talented, beautiful people. It ticks a lot of my boxes.
Since my first testosterone shot, on July 17, 2018, I’ve become an awful cliché of masculinity: Hormones do change your sex, literally. So here I am, cruising the aisles, from a super lux seat. (Downside of posh seating, no popcorn).
And never have I more needed carbs, dairy and sugar-sprinkled snacks.
It’s been an awfully tough month to be a trans and/or intersex person, in America, watching our human rights vanishing daily, with the dramatic swish of a pen, the “T” in LGBTQiA+ being systematically erased from all Ministry of Truth, I mean federal government, websites.
Tonight though, Hank Chen and I are keeping it light, gossiping about film, TV, the trauma of the L.A. fires. Our thoughts turn to the Emilia film panel discussion afterwards.
Who will it include? Or, more to the point, exclude? Does Netflix’s CEO Ted Sarandos have the balls to stand by Karla Sofía Gascón, as he did by Dave Chappelle, as a champion of free speech? Will he be here to uphold the value of this film and her performance, personal failings aside?
Now in the theater, my nerves are jangling. As Emilia’s credits roll, onto the stage walks the French director, Jacques Audiard; his translator; composers Camille and Clément Ducol; American actor Zoë Saldaña; and Adriana Paz, the only prominent Mexican actor in a movie about a Mexican cartel boss, set mostly in Mexico City and shot in a studio near Paris.
No sign of Sarandos, and Gascón was not in the theater.
Not only was she not on the panel. Nobody even mentioned her name. She’s casting a long shadow over the Oscar hopes of everyone else nominated for the film; Netflix is doing everything it can to escape it. She’s been dropped from the campaign. She’s persona non grata.
If you somehow missed the shooting of her star: journalist/podcaster Sarah Hagi unearthed some awful tweets Gascón wrote between 2016 and 2023.
Hagi argued on X, providing screenshots of the worst selection, that these messages are indefensible, blatantly Islamaphobic and racist.
Gascón’s pre-X tweets were written in Spanish, on Twitter, and once Hagi translated them from Gascón’s native tongue, using Google Translate, they really did not read well.
Gascón was swiftly convicted by the self-appointed cancel culture court. She responded quickly with a heartfelt apology, then another one, making things worse, followed by an hour on Spanish-language CNN apologizing, crying and begging for forgiveness.
She had gone rogue. Her apology attempts were clearly not Netflix PR vetted and so felt unprofessional — and yet very human. Just as she did in the film, she exuded pain, soul and vulnerability. She was evidently not prepared by Netflix for this level of exposure. There are zero signs she’s gone through professional media training 101. And now she is all alone.
The movie’s director, Jacques Audiard is quoted (in Deadline) saying her comments are “hateful” and “inexcusable” and he hasn’t spoken to her and doesn’t want to. Although he softened his tone slightly as he won a BAFTA for best director in London; and blew her a kiss.
As a qualified therapist (UK), I’m trained to facilitate conflict resolutions and how to separate a person from their emotionally dysregulated, trauma-triggered/ing words and behavior. There a saying I love, “If it’s hysterical, it’s historical”
Gascón’s stream of consciousness Twitter musings about George Floyd, BLM, and even the Academy & its embrace of diversity, are — to my Brit ears — very clunky. But some of the messages she was judged and convicted for are definitely lost in linguistic and cultural translation. Her “case” is not black and white. There are shades of grey. Mixed with blue, pink and white, colors of our trans flag.
The context and flow of real-time messages is always important. Karla Sofía Gascón is a woman who was transitioning later in life, after battling gender dysphoria and trauma for years, finally deciding that because she was suicidal, and is a parent, she must give up her white male, fame-adjacent actor status, with its privileges, and at the age of 46 in 2018, she took the huge leap and transitioned to be her fully authentic self.
For those of you who aren’t trans: like in sobriety, we track our lifeline and emotional age from the age at which we transition. Remember how much new hormones affected you as a teenager? So Karla Sofía Gascón is still a young child in “trans years,” and she’s on her own in this social media wilderness.
Gascón handles her multiple trauma layers the way most of my dolls, transmasc, intersex and queer friends do: She loves casting shade, laughing and teasing. It’s a good stress relief valve.
Her tweets also tell us she has zero time for any organized religions that seek to use their hegemony and power to oppress and infringe on human rights: Whether those people are women, trans, queer or practice different faiths.
Weighing everything up, I, for one, feel enormously sad for her. I feel compassion. Seeing her almost total erasure at the awards shows in the run up to the Academy’s breaks my heart for her.
As a therapist, I’m surprised she’s even still alive. She must have an amazing family and deep spiritual practice with her Nichiren Buddhist sangha community in Spain.
More than forty percent of trans adults have attempted suicide, and Gascón has contemplated it before, as she revealed to The Hollywood Reporter. She’s facing a campaign of hate, being dead-named and reporters are deliberately using the wrong pronouns (hugely triggering for us), and she’s receiving hundreds of death threats.
Because she is the first trans woman who might have won an Academy Award, transphobes now feel justified to vent their transphobia and attack the Academy over the fact that she’s even nominated in her best actress category.
Frankly, I’m disgusted that Ted Sarandos and Netflix have just thrown her to the wolves, without their PR team for support. They should be held accountable for their part in not properly vetting her, and for not better preparing her to handle the fallout.
Anyone who has seen this film, knows Emilia Pérez is really about redemption. Isn’t it ironic that the woman who was born to play this titular part is now no longer welcome on the stage she built?
Gascón’s apologies were just a start in the growing and healing process.
Having compassion doesn’t mean I don’t want to Gascón to become fully accountable, educate herself about Islam and racism, and do better.
I challenge the Academy to stand up for forgiveness on March 2. And I urge Hollywood to read Adrienne Maree Brown’s book We Will Not Cancel Us. Brown explains why we must move beyond knee-jerk canceling and find more sophisticated ways to hold those who cause harm to become accountable and heal in community.
Ted Sarandos and the powerful in Hollywood might be tempted to use Emilia Pérez as a great excuse to back away from the trans community.
Instead, please seek to connect with why such a tiny percentage of the population is drawing such ire? We hold a mirror up to the unconscious rejection, pain and many compromises everyone has make to live by The Rules. Never more have we needed our stories told and for you to stand in solidarity with trans and intersex people, through this unimaginably tough period of being dragged backwards.
We all need to sit down with a nice cup of tea and start talking.
Seven Graham is a writer, producer, actor, stand-up comic, creativity, recovery and mental wellness coach.