Netflix broke its silence on the scandal surrounding its drug cartel musical, Emilia Pérez, in which the film’s transgender star, Karla Sofia Gascón, has come under fire for his previous social media posts disparaging Muslims, the Chinese, and black people. “It’s such a bummer,” an executive for the streaming giant said.
“I think it’s really a bummer for the 100 incredibly talented people who made an amazing movie,” Netflix’s chief content officer Bela Bajaria said during Friday’s episode of The Town podcast after being asked about Gascón’s previous social media posts.
“And if you look at the nominations, and all of this awards love it’s received, I think it’s such a bummer that it has distracted from that,” Netflix’s chief content officer added.
Bajaria went on to say, “It really has kind of taken the conversation in a different way [from] this incredible movie that Jacques Audiard — who is an incredible director — has made.”
“To me, it really is a bummer for a lot of the people, like [Gascón’s co-stars] Zoe [Saldaña] and Selena [Gomez] — and in our awards team did an incredible campaign for that movie,” the Netflix executive added.
After being asked if Netflix will “vet” its talent “a little more closely” moving forward, Bajaria replied that while “it is not really common practice” to vet actors’ past social media posts, “a lot of people” at Netflix are now “reevaluating” the process.
“I do think it is raising questions for a lot of people [about] reevaluating that process,” she said. “I think we’re all having conversations about that.”
But Bajaria suggested that reevaluating Netflix’s vetting process might be met wit some difficulty, adding, “Are we going to actually look at people’s personal social media of the tens of thousands of people, every single day around the world, [given the] amount of original film and TV that we make? And licensing and [co-productions]?”
“I think once you extrapolate it in a bigger, practical sort of way — and these are people’s personal social media — it raises a lot of questions for people about what should that process look like,” Bajaria said.
“But I still think that the hardest thing is that it really does kind of distract from a movie that is so special,” the Netflix executive added of the drug lord musical about a Mexican cartel boss who transitions to life as a woman.
Nonetheless, Bajaria said, “If you ask me today, [knowing] everything I know, we would still buy the movie today.”
“Even knowing the tweets are out there?” The Town podcast host Matthew Belloni asked, to which Bajaria replied, “That movie is incredible, and it’s creative, and it’s bold.”
“And that’s what you want,” she added. “You want to take those big swings. And so, yes, there’s incredibly talented people who made that movie that, by the way, resonated with a lot of people this year.”
Notably, Emilia Pérez garnered 13 Academy Award nominations, with Gascón being the first transgender actor to be nominated for an Oscar.
As Breitbart News reported, Netflix’s Emilia Pérez director Jacques Audiard disavowed Gascón for his past social media posts and threatened to derail the trans actor’s campaign for Best Actress.
“I haven’t spoken to [him], and I don’t want to,” Audiard told Deadline. “[He] is in a self-destructive approach that I can’t interfere in, and I really don’t understand why [he’s] continuing.”
“Why is [he] harming herself? Why? I don’t understand it, and what I don’t understand about this, too, is why [he’s] harming people who were very close to [him],” the director added.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
