Karla Sofía Gascón made Academy Award history as the first openly transgender person to be nominated for an acting award for her performance as the titular character in Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez. This is an audacious and genre-defying telenovela-crime-musical extravaganza that has received thirteen Oscar nominations for the 97th Academy Awards, including nods for Best Picture, Best Director, and for Karla Sofía’s fellow actor Zoe Saldaña.
I caught up with Karla Sofía Gascón to discuss her work on the film ahead of the nominations.
We opened our conversation talking about the way the film has travelled to audiences around the globe. When I jumped on the video conference to chat with Karla Sofía as she ran through yet another press gauntlet, she immediately lit up as she talked about how much she wanted to visit Australia, voicing her profound love for Mad Max.
Given the global reach that Emilia Pérez, I asked her about what it means to be part of a film that has travelled from its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival to festivals down under, like the Adelaide Film Festival where a sold-out audience was moved and shaken by the film. Karla Sofía commented saying, “It’s amazing. In all places of the world, the feelings and the soul are the same. We are all human beings, and we have the same connection with this movie on the screen.”
She continues, “It’s amazing because it’s happened in Australia, in New Zealand, in Japan, in Spain, in Rome, in all places. This is amazing and I'm really happy about that.”
While Jacques Audiard is a renowned and celebrated filmmaker, it’s fair to say that the continued success of Emilia Pérez has been one of the major discussion points around the awards season. It's a trend that’s been set since the chorus of actresses in the film - Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Zoe Saldaña – collectively won the Best Actress Award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival; a rare achievement which had only occurred four times previously in the history of the festival, with Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver being the last multiple-honouree film. Emilia Pérez was then acquired by Netflix after its Cannes debut, ensuring a global audience reach.
Karla Sofía reflected on the films journey, saying how her perspective has changed since the film was originally conceived: “In the beginning, I [thought] that maybe it will be like this cool film, this kind of film that people become obsessed with, something like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or something like that. I was thinking in that way.
“But at this moment, I think this is amazing, because a lot of people, especially the people that love cinema, especially the people that love art, and the kind of people that are creative, they love it, and this is amazing for us.”
When I think of Emilia Pérez, I think of the connection that Karla Sofía Gascón had with Adriana Paz on screen. In the film, Emilia is at a point of pushing her criminal past behind her, and in an act of amelioration, alongside Saldaña’s Rita, they establish an non-profit organisation which seeks to identify the bodies of cartel victims and put to rest unresolved trauma. Emilia meets Adriana Paz’s Epifanía, a women who has her trauma revived when the remains of her abusive husband are discovered by the organisation.
Emilia and Epifanía see a sorrow in each other. It's a sorrow that can possibly be healed by the other, leading to a relationship that sees the film reach its pinnacle of emotional resonance. I asked Karla Sofía about building that relationship on screen with Adriana.
“I love of this relationship. We don’t talk a lot about this relationship, but I think this is important because it's one lesbian relationship that happened in a movie that, if you put this in another movie, it would be the central drama, and people would say, ‘Oh, this is amazing. What happened with that?’ In this movie, the relationship happens to disappear in the mind of the audience, and it is really nice, because it’s normalised this kind of relationship.
“Adriana is the one of the best actresses in the world. She has three Ariels[1], the best award in Mexico for actresses. It's really easy and nice to work with her because we have a special connection in the film.”
As Emilia Pérez travels around the world, the lead actresses have collectively participated in panel discussions, press junkets, and attending awards ceremonies, furthering the bond and connection that they have with one another that was built up from that relationship of working on the film.
Karla Sofía says that this relationship is the same as when they commenced the film, “Sometimes we love, sometimes we don’t love too much. We sometimes fight. Sometimes we kiss. It is the same as a family, because at the end we are all human beings.
“We are a funny group full of people that love what we’ve made. My daughter comes with other children to one place, and my daughter comes with Selena to the other place. We really are a family. Now the difficulty for me is maybe when this ends. What happens with the end? I don’t know.
“The most important thing that remains is that we love each other.”
The 97th Academy Awards will take place on 2 March 2025.
[1] The Ariel Awards recognise the best of Mexican cinema.