The past week has been one of the most wild moments in Oscar-campaign history. Emilia Perez, a much-loathed and deeply problematic film, was already seen as unworthy of its thirteen Oscar nominations and it was already being targeted – in an above-board way – with bad press. Then EP’s star Karla Sofia Gascon blamed that bad press on Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres. That seemed to be the moment when all hell broke loose. Suddenly, Brazilians were like, okay, let’s play. They began doing deeper dives on all of Gascon’s problematic statements and behavior and amplifying all of it. Then Canadian journalist/culture writer Sarah Hagi simply did a deep dive on Gascon’s long Twitter history. A goldmine of bigotry, racism, antisemitism and hate.

After the initial shock of Gascon’s Islamophic, racist and anti-Asian tweets, people still kept digging. She was literally showing sympathy for Adolf Hitler (she thinks he merely had “opinions” about Jewish people) in between mocking Angelina Jolie, Selena Gomez, and Adele. Well, on Friday, she finally deleted her Twitter account and sent a hilariously bad “apology” – her second apology of the week – to the Hollywood Reporter. THR notes that Gascon’s Oscar campaign has imploded to the point where Netflix simply doesn’t know what to do next. Here’s Gascon’s apology:

I’m sorry, but I can no longer allow this campaign of hate and misinformation to affect neither my family nor me anymore, 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. I had long ago made the decision to close a social network [sic], which has taken a terrible turn, in which I have also sometimes fallen, and for which I apologize.

As part of this society, I have expressed my disagreement or agreement with all the related issues that have touched me and of which I have had an opinion, often erroneous, which has changed throughout my own experience. I have always used my social media as a diary, reflections or notes, to later create stories or characters, not as something that would be scrutinized down to the last of its 140 characters, since sometimes I, myself, am not even aware of having written something negative.

I have defended each and every one of the minorities in this world and supported freedom of religion and any action against racism and homophobia in the same way that I have criticized the hypocrisy that underlies them, because the first thing I am critical of is myself. You will never hear me support a war, an injustice, extremism or applaud anyone who oppresses other human beings. Perhaps my words are not correct, many times due to ignorance or pure mistake. I apologize again if anyone has ever felt offended or in the future.

I am a human being who also made, makes and will make mistakes from which I will learn. I am not perfect. Taking my words out of context or manipulating them to hurt me is something I am not responsible for. I am only responsible for what I say, not for what others say I say or what others interpret from what I say.

I hope to have the opportunity to give a more extensive explanation at some point. Forgive me because I keep going from one side to the other and I cannot be responding to every single thing you bring up to try to sink me. But if you want, you can continue attacking me as if I were responsible for hunger and wars in the world. I apologize again if I have ever offended anyone with my words in my life.

I am only Karla Sofía Gascón, an actress who has reached where very few have thanks to her effort and work, without stealing or harming anyone in this world, just trying to get them to let me live in peace, love and respect, something that seems to bother a lot of people in this world.

It is clear that there is something very dark behind it.

But I tell you something: “The more you try to sink me, the stronger it will make me. The greater the victory will be.”

Please forgive me once again if any of my words hurt you.
Sincerely, Karla.

[From THR]

Starting the apology with “I can no longer allow this campaign of hate and misinformation to affect neither my family nor me anymore” is so funny because… it’s not a campaign of hate or misinformation. It’s people hitting “Google Translate” on Karla’s own tweets. The unimaginable hate campaign…of translating this woman’s tweets. I also didn’t know she had a daughter before now, convenient lil’ human shield she’s got there. Anyway, there are two sides to this – clearly, Gascon has been massively problematic for years, if not decades, and that’s her problem. But the other side of it is: was Netflix sleeping at the wheel or what? Did no one over there think to double-check Gascon’s socials? And as so many people have noted, Netflix made a big choice to put so much money behind Emilia Perez and not, say, Maria and Angelina Jolie. We’ve gotten to the point where people are openly wondering if Gascon’s Oscar nom could be revoked somehow.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.