Netflix CCO finally addresses the Emilia Perez star Karla Sofía Gascón controversy 

Emilia Perez star Karla Sofía Gascón has affected the film's Oscar chances after it received 13 nominations, record-breaking for a non-English film. Gascón's controversial social media comments have trailed the film's award buzz.

Finally, Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria addressed this controversy during her appearance on The Town podcast. She spoke about the impact of Karla Sofía Gascón's comments on the film and its other stars, including Zoe Saldaña, who is a frontrunner for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

"It really is a bummer for a lot of the people, like [co-stars] Zoe [Saldaña] and Selena [Gomez]. And our awards team did an incredible campaign for that movie.”

Despite the issues it has faced, Bajaria stands by this "creative" and "bold" movie.

“If you ask me today, everything I know, we would still buy the movie today. That movie is incredible and it’s creative and it’s bold — that’s what you want, and it resonated with a lot of people this year.”

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Emilia Perez: Netflix CCO finally addresses the controversy regarding Oscar-nominated Karla Sofía Gascón

Emilia Perez has been a frontrunner throughout this award season. It garnered 13 nominations at the Oscars and bumped the number of nods for Netflix. One of these honorees was its star Karla Sofía Gascón, who became the first openly trans actress with an Oscar nod.

However, shortly after this announcement, Karla Sofía Gascón's old, controversial social media comments resurfaced including her allegedly racist tweets. As a result, she is not expected to be attending the BAFTA ceremony. Her views have reportedly impacted the film's chances at the upcoming Academy Awards and killed the buzz it has created over time.

In line with this, Netflix CCO Bela Bajaria spoke about the film during her conversation on the The Town podcast.

“I think it’s really a bummer for the 100 incredibly talented people who made an amazing movie. And if you look at the nominations, and all of this awards-love that it’s received, I think it’s such a bummer that it distracted from that. It reallyhas kind of taken the conversation in a different way [from] this incredible movie that Jacques Audiard — who is an incredible director — has made."

When asked about whether Karla Sofía Gascón's controversy would impact Netflix's social media strategy, Bajaria said,

“It’s not really common practice for people to vet social tweets that way … A lot of people are reevaluating that … I do think it is raising questions for a lot of people about reevaluating that process.”

She further added,

“I think you also have to [ask]: Are we going to actually look at the personal social media of tens of thousand of people, every single day around the world, [given the] amount of original film and TV and co-prods that we make and license? It raises a lot of questions about what that should look like.”

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Also read: Netflix CCO claims that Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer would have done the same if it had been a Netflix exclusive