Karla Sofía Gascón Is 'Deeply Sorry' for Resurfaced Tweets: 'Light Will Always Triumph Over Darkness'
'I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt,' Gascón said. 'As someone in a marginalized community, I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain. All my life I have fought for a better world. I believe light will always triumph over darkness.'
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Karla Sofía Gascón's Years-Old Social Media Posts About George Floyd, Islam Cause Stir Online
Here's How the Oscars Should Address L.A.'s Wildfires
Lois Burwell Resigns From Film Academy's Board of Governors (Exclusive)
The Emilia Pérez star made headlines early Thursday, when her old posts on X (formerly Twitter) resurfaced and incited controversy.
In separate tweets, Gascón had tweeted about the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the Muslim population in her native Spain.
'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,' she wrote in the summer of 2020 (in Spanish, which was translated here by Google Translate). '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.'
Later that year, she tweeted, '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 on Nov. 23, 2020. 'Maybe next year instead of English we'll have to teach Arabic.'
She also went on to suggest that Islam goes 'against European values and violate human rights' and that the religion should be banned.
Emilia Peréz leads this year's Oscar nominations with 13, including a best actress nod for Gascón, making her the first openly transgender actress to receive the honor. In another tweet, Gascón shared her thoughts on the 2021 Oscars telecast, which saw the best picture prize going to Nomadland: 'More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films, 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.'
Several of Gascón's posts disappeared from her account later on Thursday, with many expressing confusion over why they were still up in the first place, considering her own Oscars campaign. The controversy also comes after the actress suggested in an interview with a Brazilian newspaper that online forces are at work in an attempt to smear her and the Emilia Pérez team. 'What I don't like are social media teams — people who work with these people — trying to diminish our work, like me and my movie, because that doesn't lead anywhere,' she said. 'You don't need to tear down someone's work to highlight another's. I have never, at any point, said anything bad about Fernanda Torres or her movie. However, there are people working with Fernanda Torres tearing me and Emilia Pérez down. That speaks more about their movie than mine.'
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
The Best Anti-Fascist Films of All Time
Dinosaurs, Zombies and More 'Wicked': The Most Anticipated Movies of 2025
From 'A Complete Unknown' to 'Selena' to 'Ray': 33 Notable Music Biopics
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Spain replaces women's team coach Montse Tomé with Sonia Bermúdez
MADRID (AP) — Spain's women's national team is making a coaching change two weeks after reaching the final of the European Championship. Montse Tomé will not have her contract renewed and will be replaced by former player Sonia Bermúdez, the Spanish soccer federation said Monday. Another former Spain player, Iraia Iturregi, was named the team's second coach. The decision was made by the federation's board members after Tomé led Spain to the Euro 2025 final, which it lost to England in a penalty shootout on July 27. Tomé replaced former coach Jorge Vilda following the team's World Cup title in 2023. She led Spain to the title of the inaugural Women's Nations League in 2024. Her current contract with the national team was valid until the end of the month. Tomé was the first woman to coach the senior women's team in Spain. She had been an assistant to Vilda during the World Cup and was promoted in the fallout of former federation president Luis Rubiales' nonconsensual kiss of player Jenni Hermoso during the World Cup's awards ceremony in Australia. Spain has enjoyed some peace and stability since Rubiales was convicted of sexual assault for the kiss that ignited one of the worst crises in Spanish soccer. The outrage surrounding the scandal led to widespread changes and improved conditions for the women's national team. Spanish society called for more support for women, and sports officials ultimately were forced to review outdated protocols related to the women's squad. Bermúdez was a Spain international and also played for Barcelona and Atletico Madrid, among other clubs. She retired as a player in 2020. Bermúdez had been coaching the youth squads of Spain's national team. She was currently with the under-23 squad. The board that made the decision was composed of 30 members, half of them women.
NBC News
2 hours ago
- NBC News
Islamic court in Indonesia sentences 2 men to public caning after they were caught hugging and kissing
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — An Islamic court in Indonesia's conservative Aceh province on Monday sentenced two men to public caning, 80 times each, after Islamic religious police caught them engaged in what the court deemed were sexual acts: hugging and kissing. The trial at the Islamic Shariah District Court in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, was held behind closed doors. Judges have the authority to limit public access in such a case and open it only for the verdict. The two men, aged 20 and 21, were arrested in April after residents saw them entering the same bathroom at Taman Sari city park and reported it to police patrolling the area. The police broke into the toilet and caught the men kissing and hugging, which the court considered to be a sexual act. The lead judge, Rokhmadi M. Hum, said the two college students were "legally and convincingly" proven to have violated Islamic law by committing acts that lead to gay sexual relations. The court didn't publicly identify the men. Prosecutors previously sought 85 strokes of the cane for each, but the three-judge panel decided on what they described as lenient punishment because the men were outstanding students who were polite in court, cooperated with authorities and had no previous convictions. The judges also ordered the time they have served to be deducted from their sentence. It means the number of lashes will be reduced by four as they have been detained for four months. The prosecutor, Alfian, who like many Indonesians uses only a single name, said he was not satisfied with the lighter sentence. But he said he will not appeal. Aceh is the only province in Muslim-majority Indonesia allowed to observe a version of Islamic law. It allows up to 100 lashes for morality offenses including gay sex. Caning is also punishment for adultery, gambling, drinking and for women who wear tight clothes and men who skip Friday prayers. Indonesia's secular central government granted Aceh the right to implement the law in 2006 as part of a peace deal to end a separatist war. Aceh implemented an expansion in 2015 that extended the law to non-Muslims, who account for about 1% of the province's population. Human rights groups have criticized the law, saying it violates international treaties signed by Indonesia protecting the rights of minorities. Indonesia's national criminal code doesn't regulate homosexuality. Monday's verdict was the fifth time that Aceh has sentenced people to public caning for homosexuality since the Islamic law was implemented. In February, the same court sentenced two men to public caning up to 85 times for gay sex after neighborhood vigilantes in Banda Aceh suspected them of being gay and broke into their rented room to catch them naked and hugging each other.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Republican Winsome Earle-Sears is on the defensive in Virginia's race for governor
HOPEWELL, Va. (AP) — Against an olive drab backdrop in a barbecue joint filled with the aroma of pulled pork and the sweat of a Virginia summer, Republican Winsome Earle-Sears told voters she was running her campaign for governor like a military-style operation. The lieutenant governor, a former Marine, said she would protect Virginia just as she did America. The way Earle-Sears tells it, not all attacks come from soldiers. Earlier that day, she was asked on national television why Republican President Donald Trump had not endorsed her and whether she stood by her description of him as a liability back in 2022, before his return to the Oval Office about two years later. She challenged the question as backward-looking and called the interview by CNN's Manu Raju a trap. The interview quickly unraveled into a squabble. 'They ambushed me to talk about things that are so in the past, when we've got to move forward,' she told a crowd gathered at Saucy's Sit-Down Bar.B.Q, a mainstay in Hopewell. Her words in both settings, while cast in military terms, reflected a campaign on the defensive. Underfunded and lacking unity Earle-Sears, who faces Democrat Abigail Spanberger, a former congresswoman, in November, is taking her 'Operation Defend & Deliver' campaign across the state. The off-year election all but guarantees that Virginia will have its first female governor in a race that offers an early sense of voter sentiment before the 2026 midterms. An Earle-Sears victory also would make her the first Black woman to serve as a governor, according to the Center for American Women in Politics. But that feels like a distant prospect at the moment. The nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project says Spanberger has raised more than $27 million so far, with more than $15 million on hand. Nearly every Democrat in Virginia politics has pledged to support her. When Democrats Ghazala Hashmi and Jay Jones won their respective primary races for lieutenant governor and attorney general, the three nominees went on a bus tour across Virginia. Earle-Sears' ticket lacks that kind of unity, though that is not entirely of her doing. Once the Republican statewide nominees had solidified before the June primaries, GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin asked John Reid, the candidate for lieutenant governor, to leave the ticket after opposition research linked him to a social media account with sexually explicit photos. Reid denied the allegations and refused to step down, but a rally for the statewide ticket was canceled. After that, the three top Republican candidates did not campaign together for months. Earle-Sears' campaign, meanwhile, has had its own challenges. This summer, a pastor with little political experience stepped down from managing her campaign, and her team has failed to gain traction with big money donors. Attorney General Jason Miyares, seeking a second term, has raised nearly as much money, with roughly $2 million short of the lieutenant governor. He has more in the bank — nearly $7 million compared with almost $5 million for Earle-Sears. One of her biggest donors, a political action committee tied to the Republican Governors Association, gave $500,000 to her campaign in June. But by this time in August 2021, the association had donated more than $2 million to Youngkin's campaign. Responding to written questions about the donations, a spokesperson for the association said: 'Winsome Earle-Sears is the only candidate in this race who will keep Virginia on the right track forged by Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Under their leadership, parents' rights have been protected, Virginia's economy is growing, and communities are safe.' Youngkin, who is term-limited, has offered more than $21,000 in support to Earle-Sears through his political action committee between March and June. When asked in June whether he would give more, his PAC said the governor was "working to elect the entire GOP ticket and is urging all Virginians to support the commonsense team this November to keep Virginia winning.' Tepid support from Trump Republicans went into this election facing tough sledding in swing-state Virginia. Ever since Democrat Jimmy Carter won the White House in 1976, Virginia has backed a governor from the opposite party of a first-term president in the following year. Whatever the outcome in Virginia, 2025 is a special case, given the gap between Trump's terms. Trump stopped short of an outright endorsement when asked last weekend about supporting Earle-Sears. 'I mean, I would,' he said. 'I think probably she's got a tough race. ... She shouldn't have, because the candidate she's running against is not very good, but I think she's got a tough race. But I would.' Many state Republicans are more forceful about standing behind their nominee. At the Hopewell gathering, Republican Dels. Mike Cherry and Scott Wyatt, who are seeking reelection, urged voters to back the lieutenant governor. In a prayer, Cherry asked God to 'imbue her with strength and stamina for the days that are to come in the final, waning days of this election.' Wyatt encouraged voters to help Earle-Sears continue the successes of Youngkin's administration. Then Earle-Sears walked onto the stage, smiling and cracking jokes. She described a political climate where Democrats and the media were hitting her with everything they've got. She predicted that she would show them come November. 'How many of you have seen or read about the polls, which say I am 10 points down?' she said. 'Don't believe it.' Not that she doesn't need more money to make that happen. 'Are we going to pass the offering bucket?' Earle-Sears said to a chuckling crowd. 'OK, see, you're laughing again, and I'm not laughing because that's what it's going to take for us to win.'
