Emilia Pérez director doesn't get why Karla Sofía Gascón is doing all that

Can you take Emilia Pérez out of Emilia Pérez? Netflix has already washed its hands of the film's star. Now its director, too, is putting a healthy amount of distance between himself and star Karla Sofía Gascón in the wake of her Twitter controversy. "It’s very hard for me to think back to the work I did with Karla Sofía," Jacques Audiard tells Deadline in a new interview. He denounces her old social media posts as "inexcusable" and her attempt to manage the scandal as a self-destructive. "She’s really playing the victim. She’s talking about herself as a victim, which is surprising," Audiard says. "It's as if she thought that words don’t hurt."

Once, the movie's awards campaign centered around how Gascón collaborated closely with Audiard to give Emilia's character more nuance. The duo were so close that the filmmaker ceded the stage to the actor when the film won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture—Musical or Comedy. Now, Audiard says he hasn't spoken with Gascón at all, saying she "needs space to reflect and take accountability for her actions." He adds that her defiant response to the controversy has harmed not only herself, but also "people who were very close to her," including "the crew and all these people who worked so incredibly hard on this film. I’m thinking of myself, I’m thinking of Zoe [Saldaña] and Selena [Gomez]. I just don’t understand why she’s continuing to harm us."

Audiard is evasive about criticisms of his own approach to Emilia Pérez. He frames his comments about Spanish being a language of the poor as a misunderstanding ("What’s been said about my statement is actually exactly the opposite of what I think"). And in terms of the depiction of the Mexican cartels, he laments "being attacked in the court of realism" when he really just wanted to make an opera. "I worked five years on this film and for it to now be denigrated in this way, it’s really simply too much," he complains. 

Overall, Audiard mostly sounds bothered that Gascón's scandal has done such damage to the film's reputation. He's committed to defending the film and supporting Zoe Saldaña's Oscar campaign, but the whole thing has become "sad," he says. "I honestly have to say I’ve never been treated this way before."