Emilia Pérez Director Hasn’t & ‘Doesn’t Want To’ Talk To Karla Sofía Gascón After Backlash

Emilia Pérez director Jacques Audiard is also distancing himself from star Karla Sofía Gascón following the surfacing of controversial comments made by the actress, telling Deadline he has no desire to speak to her.

Speaking to Deadline in a recent interview, Audiard expressed how openly disappointed he was in Gascón, and said he hasn’t spoken to her and does not want to. Audiard also said he didn’t understand why Gascón has continued to react to things the way she has, saying it is “self-destructive” and harming those involved in the film.

“I haven’t spoken to her, and I don’t want to,” said Audiard. “She is in a self-destructive approach that I can’t interfere in, and I really don’t understand why she’s continuing. Why is she harming herself? Why? I don’t understand it, and what I don’t understand about this too is why she’s harming people who were very close to her. I’m thinking in this thing of how hurting others, of how she’s hurting the crew and all these people who worked so incredibly hard on this film. I’m thinking of myself, I’m thinking of Zoe [Saldaña] and Selena [Gomez]. I just don’t understand why she’s continuing to harm us.”

What is the Karla Sofía Gascón controversy?

Earlier this month, past comments from Gascón surfaced, where the actress commented on the murder of George Floyd in 2020, as well as things like the Muslim population in her native Spain, and even commenting on Christopher Columbus and statues of him being taken down in certain places.

“Let me get this straight, a guy tries to pass off a counterfeit bill after consuming methamphetamine, an idiot policeman arrives and goes too far in arresting him, killing him, ruining the lives of his family and his colleagues, and turning the guy with the bill into a martyr hero,” Gascón wrote in a tweet in 2020 (via THR). “I truly believe that very few people ever cared about George Floyd, a drug addict and a hustler, but his death has served to highlight once again that there are those who still consider Black people to be monkeys without rights and those who consider the police to be murderers. All wrong.”

Gascón also previously mentioned the Muslim population in Spain growing, saying that Islam goes “against European values and violate human rights” and should be banned, and also taking umbrage with the fact that more Muslim people were entering Spain.

“Sorry, is it just my impression or are there more and more Muslims in Spain? Every time I go to pick up my daughter from school there are more women with their hair covered and their skirts down to their heels,” she posted Nov. 23, 2020. “Maybe next year instead of English we’ll have to teach Arabic.”

(Source: Deadline)