Karla Sofía Gascón Opens Up on Oscars Turmoil: “I Contemplated the Unthinkable”

Karla Sofía Gascón recently faced backlash for comments made on Twitter, now X, where she shared opinions on topics like Muslims, George Floyd, and diversity in the entertainment industry. These posts caused a public uproar, leading Gascón to skip several important awards ceremonies, including the Critics Choice Awards, the BAFTA Film Awards, and the SAG Awards, despite being nominated for all three.

After the controversy erupted, Gascón issued an apology, acknowledging the pain her words caused and expressing regret for her actions. In her statement to Variety, she 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.” She also emphasized her lifelong commitment to fighting for a better world and her belief that “light will always triumph over darkness.”

Despite the controversy, Gascón has made history as the first openly transgender actor to be nominated for an Oscar. She has also earned numerous groundbreaking achievements, such as being the first transgender woman to win Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival and the first trans woman nominated for acting at the Golden Globes.

Less than a week after the 2025 Oscars, Gascón is looking back on her awards season journey with Netflix. Despite leading with 13 Oscar nominations, Emilia Pérez won only two awards—Best Song (“El Mal”) and Best Supporting Actress (Zoe Saldaña).

Gascón, who later joked on social media about O’Brien telling her to call him Jimmy Kimmel, told The Hollywood Reporter that she really enjoyed the Oscars. “I honestly loved the ceremony—it was a great experience,” she said.

“I would have liked to experience it more normally, from the happiness of being nominated, of celebrating, as I am now, full of love, a person who puts her soul and her being into her work and who gives herself to others,” she adds. “I am very grateful to return and for how my colleagues and the professionals of the Hollywood industry received me. I am grateful to the academy, to Netflix and to the production.”

She apologized again to anyone she had hurt in the past, asking for forgiveness and promising to keep learning to avoid repeating her mistakes. She admits that some of her past hurtful words and actions came from fear, ignorance, and personal pain.

She also hopes to use her experience—including the tough moments—to start an honest conversation about mental health.

Gascón says the controversy surrounding her resurfaced tweets was overwhelming, with fake accounts spreading false accusations about her, making the situation even harder to handle. She describes feeling so overwhelmed that it was difficult to breathe.

She described the controversy as a sudden and devastating storm. She admits that the pain was so overwhelming that she had very dark thoughts—worse than anything she had faced before—though she doesn’t say exactly what they were.

She wonders how someone with less emotional strength would have handled such intense backlash, fearing that others might not have survived it. Despite everything, she says she managed to get through it, but it was an incredibly difficult experience.

“I harbored darker thoughts than those I considered in some of my previous, no less intimate and personal struggles,” Gascón says, “And I asked myself: if I, with all my strength and preparedness to deal with rage and rejection, am on the edge, what would have become of someone with fewer emotional resources to resist this onslaught? Somehow, I made it. Others would not have survived this brutal winter I am about to wrap up.”

“Now that the storm is calming down a bit, and the worst has passed (or so I hope), I start seeing clearly what I have learned. I’ve learned that hatred, like fire, cannot be put down with more hatred,” she says. “Offenses cannot be erased with more offenses, and mistakes cannot clean up other mistakes, especially when lies and falseness proliferate all around and when all they send back to me is pure rage, blatant bullying, vexation, scorn and even death threats.”

“Fortunately, I have kept my one inch of sanity to see the light at the end of this tunnel of hate and understand that I must be and do better, and correct my past faults, without engaging in more darkness. Otherwise, if I play their game, and reciprocate and amplify all that hate others project on me, I will get lost; I will never move forward, and I won’t be able to keep helping others still stuck in the storm.”

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