The many controversies of Emilia Pérez, a Best Picture nominee at this year’ Oscars ceremony, have now begat a meme.
As has likely been unavoidable on your timeline over the past 48 hours, Karla Sofía Gascón, one of the stars of Jacques Audiard’s film, is at the center of controversy after resurfaced tweets started gaining traction. Among the topics touched on in the widely called-out tweets are George Floyd’s murder, Islam, COVID-19, and the 2021 Oscars ceremony.
That year, Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland took home the night’s top honor, with star Frances McDormand earning her third Best Actress win. Other 2021 winners included Judas and the Black Messiah, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Father, Sound of Metal, Mank, and Minari.
“More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films,” Gascón wrote in a 2021 tweet, per a report from Variety. “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.”
Not long after reports on the resurfaced tweets started making the rounds, Gascón issued an apology.
“As someone in a marginalized community, I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain,” she said, in part.
Meanwhile, X users were swift to latch on to the “Afro-Korean festival” phrase from the aforementioned 2021 tweet, running with jokes imagining what such a gathering might look like while the larger controversy surrounding Gascón’s comments continued to grow.
Below, see a few examples.
By Friday, Gascón’s X account was no longer active. The actress also shared a significantly lengthier statement with the Hollywood Reporter about the controversy.
“Perhaps my words are not correct, many times due to ignorance or pure mistake,” she said in the new statement, the full version of which can be found here. “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.”
Earlier Friday, Complex reached out to Netflix and Academy reps for comment in connection with the resurfaced tweets. Neither had responded as of this writing.