Let’s Talk About Karla Sofía Gascón’s Resurfaced Tweets…

Evidently, the bizarre back-and-forth prompted people to look a little deeper into Gascón’s social media accounts because one day later, a series of truly deplorable tweets resurfaced. Among them was a tweet from 2020 (it’s now deleted) that included a photo of a Muslim family (with a woman in a burka) dining in a restaurant.“Islam is marvelous, without any machismo. Women are respected, and when they are so respected they are left with a little squared hole on their faces for their eyes to be visible and their mouths, but only if she behaves. Although they dress this way for their own enjoyment. How DEEPLY DISGUSTING OF HUMANITY.”

Another tweet from 2020, posted days after George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin: “I really think that very few people ever cared about George Floyd, a drug addict swindler, but his death has served to once again demonstrate that there are people who still consider black people to be monkeys Without rights and consider policemen to be assassins. They’re all wrong.” And in another tweet from 2019, she wrote that Hitler “simply had his opinions of the Jews.” She even punctuated it with a prayer hands emojis.

Unfortunately, these very public backings of bigotry continued in 2021.

“I am so sick of so much of this shit, of islam, of christianity, of catholicism and of all the fucking beliefs of morons that violate human rights,” Gascón wrote in a tweet. And in another, she took specific aim at that year’s Academy Awards: “More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films, I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M. Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala.”

Naturally, in addition to deleting all of the tweets, Gascón issued an apology but surprisingly, didn’t deploy the “I’ve read an anti-racism book and have been rehabilitated in recent years” defense. Instead, she went with “light will always triumph over darkness.” A choice!

“I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt,” she said in a statement to Variety. “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.”

By Friday, Gascón deactivated her account altogether and wrote in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter: “I’m sorry, but 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. I have been threatened with death, insulted, abused and harassed to the point of exhaustion. I have a wonderful daughter to protect, whom I love madly and who supports me in everything.”

Meanwhile, screenshots of more of Gascón’s vile tweets from the last five years continued to circulate, including this one that called Miley Cyrus’ past relationships with women “evil, horrible, unnatural, lesbian perversion.” Gascón, I’ll note, is married to a woman.

So far, no one affiliated with Emilia Pérez has issued a statement (or, in Selena Gomez’s case, a tearful video that would no doubt be deleted hours later). The Academy, too, has remained silent. But the backlash among the terminally online has been—quite deservedly—swift, with many bemoaning Gascón’s lack of forethought in not deleting the posts before she…oh, I don’t know, got nominated for an Oscar. Surely, all of this could’ve been avoided by scrubbing her Twitter account. It could also have been avoided by not being a racist, homophobic Islamaphobe.

What a profound disappointment to learn that someone who’s made history is just…Caitlin Jenner. All this for an unforgivably bad film.