To my naive surprise on this cold Friday morning, Karla Sofia Gascón He seems to be at home. On the brunch patio of a luxurious Palm Springs lodge, where practically all the Oscar 2025 hopefuls have descended to start the new year with a star-studded gala, the Emilia Perez Star grabs a corner table for us just a few feet away. Stanley Tucci top contender star Conclave, and even closer to longs‘s mikey madison, a fellow industry revelation in the race for best actress. At one point, the Oscar-nominated director Denis Villeneuve (Dune: Part 2) hovers behind me as Gascón speaks, waiting his turn to share a few words of praise. That’s how it’s been for more than seven months, and for an artist who hasn’t even come close to these glitzy gatherings for much of her decades-long career. “It’s completely crazy,” Gascón tells me later. “Intense, exhausting, but it has also moved me many times.”
I met Gascón last May, sitting next to him. Emilia Perez co-stars Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldana on a rooftop in Cannes, France, when the madness was just beginning. His audacious film: a transcentric musical, in Spanish and focused on crime, directed by a French author. Jacques Audiard—had just premiered on the Croisette with great enthusiasm, and almost everyone left the screening with two big questions: What the hell did I just see? and Who is Karla Sofía Gascón?? Starring alongside two American superstars, Spain’s Gascón, known until then for her work in Mexican soap operas, was revelatory in the lead role. The film won two awards at the pageant (including a joint award for best actress for the ensemble), was picked up for an awards release by Netflix, and began touring around the world. Gascón’s life began to change rapidly.
Now she’s nominated for a Golden Globe and Critics Alternative, and is set to become the first openly trans actress in history to receive an Oscar nomination. (eliot page, nominated in 2008 for Juno, she came out as trans in 2020.) “I think I’ve done my job when it comes to acting, and awards and nominations, that’s a plus,” Gascón says through a translator, who sits between us. “I did my best work. But I have made history in cinema with my work; “My message to the world is much broader.” At Sunday night’s Golden Globes, Emilia Perez won four awards, the last of which, best film (musical/comedy), allowed Gascón to close the night with a moving speech.
“They can imprison us, they can beat us, but they can never take away our soul, our existence, our identity,” he said. “I want to tell you: raise your voice for freedom. “I am who I am, not who you want.”
Emilia Perez follows a cartel leader who enlists the help of a disillusioned but brilliant lawyer (Saldaña) to secretly facilitate his gender-affirming care. In the film’s first act, Gascón plays Emilia before her transition, an unexpected choice for Audiard, who assumed she would not want to play her until she insisted on it, eager for the challenge. The actress highlights this, surprisingly, as the most comfortable aspect of her performance: “It was completely outside of me. I was guided by the character. “I was playing a Frankenstein.” When it came time to confront Emilia in the second half of the film, when he falls in love, faces his demons, and reunites with his ex-wife (Gómez) and children, Gascón delved deeper.
The resulting twist, moving and tender and full of unresolved pain, has brought Gascón to this Palm Springs patio, approaching the final act of a groundbreaking candidacy that has conquered filmmakers around the world. In fact, Villeneuve is not alone. I attended several Academy screenings in Los Angeles, where he performed to standing ovations, and Gascón found love from some iconic figures. (“So GOOD,” Annette Bening praised me as he left an event he organized for the film at CAA.) There are several top names that Gascón shares with me off the record and who have personally communicated. She has been considered award-worthy by everyone from the prestigious European Film Academy (where she won best actress, a key precursor to the Oscar) to the New York Times‘chief film critic.
However, making history comes with responsibility and resilience. “I have more media power, more people listen to my words and I have much more impact in what I say, bringing hope to others,” he says. “I’m also much more dangerous: I can say something that could be misinterpreted or my words can be manipulated to fit other people’s messages.”
Just before the New Year, Gascón reposted a hateful death threat directed at her in X. “To say goodbye to the year, these are the types of elements we face every day,” she wrote on the platform. “I expose them because some people tell me that I exaggerate. But me, the more: the more flammable for me.”
Like many trans public figures, Gascón faces continued online harassment and vicious comments. She has gone out of her way to highlight bigotry rather than ignore it. “In the end, social networks are the future in our relationships as human beings, whether we like it or not,” he says. “As a 52-year-old, I don’t care what people say about me, but for my 14-year-old daughter, that may not be true. That is why we, real people, must fight against that negativity.”
Gascón is not sugarcoated. She has appeared every moment of this awards season as herself. She conquers every room she finds herself in with sharp, casual humor and a genuine warmth that’s hard to resist; I have become familiar with the energy as I get to know it better. She recently received an Instagram DM that resonated with her and she paraphrased it for me: “Don’t let any manager or anyone try to polish you, try to make you say more things in the message.” She has not done so nor does she do so in this interview. For example: “I’ve been doing red carpets for the last seven or eight months and I hate them. “It’s absurd.”
