Oscars 2025: As Emilia Perez saga escalates, let’s shed a tear for poor old Netflix

Emilia Pérez already had its detractors among trans commentators, some of whom saw it as peddling tired and offensive tropes, including of “the trans woman killer” and “the tragic trans woman”.

Dubbing it “profoundly retrograde” and “a step backward for trans representation” last November, soon after the movie began streaming on Netflix in North America (in other territories it has received a wider cinema release), GLAAD rounded up more than a dozen views from trans writers pointing out the problematic ways the film – written and directed by a heterosexual cis-male – dealt with transgender issues.

Some commentators also took offence at its approach to Mexico, pointing out that only one Mexican actor had been cast in a prominent speaking role, the film’s writer-director was French and did not speak Spanish, and the movie was shot in France. Muy autentico? No.

More recently, concerns about Gascón surfaced when she accused the campaign of fellow Latinx best actress nominee Fernanda Torres, star of I Am Still Here, of bad-mouthing Emilia Perez.

“You will never see me talking negatively about Fernanda Torres or her film,” she said during an interview on Brazilian television last week. “But on the contrary, I do see many people working around Fernanda Torres who talk badly about me, and Emilia Pérez.”

While that may have sounded paranoid, the idea that some film publicists might deploy the dark arts to elevate their own film’s chances or to denigrate a rival’s is not as far-fetched as it sounds. And thanks to the ongoing tawdriness of the Justin Baldoni-Blake Lively reputational mud wrestling contest, we have real insight into just how vindictive such campaigns can be.

So when Gascón’s tweets – issued between 2016 and 2023 – surfaced last week, suspicions were raised that this might be yet another instance of studio politics at play. After all, the overarching reason d’etre of the Oscars is to get people into cinemas, yet Netflix remains steadfastly opposed to anything but the most desultory theatrical releases for its movies (Oscarbait pictures get the necessary one-week season in Los Angeles, rarely more). Granting a best-picture win to the streamer would, in the eyes of many in Hollywood, merely add insult to injury.

But Sarah Hagi, the Canadian journalist and podcaster who found them, insists she found them organically, simply by following her instincts.

“I saw a tweet in which she used the word ‘Islamist’, which I found intense,” she told Variety. “It wasn’t a conspiracy – I do this with many celebrities. I just searched a term, and what I found was shocking.”

What Gascón wrote about George Floyd, whose murder by police in 2020 sparked Black Lives Matter protests, and about Muslims and diversity all served to paint a picture of a woman whose tolerance for others was sadly lacking.

“To highlight someone else’s work, you don’t need to destroy others,” Gascón said during that TV interview.

But to destroy your own, she might have added, you only need to highlight yourself.