Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón has said she was “threatened with death” before deleting her X (formerly Twitter) account.
The 52-year-old had sparked outrage on social media in recent days over a series of resurfaced posts from her X account expressing controversial views about Muslims, George Floyd and diversity at the Oscars.
She had since apologized “to those I have caused pain.”
In a new statement to The Hollywood Reporter, Gascón acknowledged that she has now deleted her X account and said: “I’m sorry, but I can no longer allow this campaign of hate and misinformation to affect me and my family, so at their request I am closing my account on X.
“I have been threatened with death, insulted, abused and harassed to the point of exhaustion. I have a wonderful daughter to protect, whom I love madly and who supports me in everything.”
Gascón recently made history when she became the first-ever openly trans individual nominated for an Academy Award in any acting category.
Her statement continues: “I had long ago made the decision to close a social network [sic], which has taken a terrible turn, in which I have also sometimes fallen, and for which I apologize.
“As part of this society, I have expressed my disagreement or agreement with all the related issues that have touched me and of which I have had an opinion, often erroneous, which has changed throughout my own experience. I have always used my social media as a diary, reflections or notes, to later create stories or characters, not as something that would be scrutinized down to the last of its 140 characters, since sometimes I, myself, am not even aware of having written something negative.
“I have defended each and every one of the minorities in this world and supported freedom of religion and any action against racism and homophobia in the same way that I have criticized the hypocrisy that underlies them, because the first thing I am critical of is myself.”
On Thursday, journalist Sarah Hagi drew attention to a series of posts made on X from Gascón’s account between 2020 and 2021.
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One post from November 2020 said: “I’m sorry, Is it just my impression or is there more muslims in Spain? Every time I go to pick up my daughter from school there are more women with their hair covered and their skirts down to their heels. Next year instead of English we’ll have to teach Arabic.”
Gascón also posted a string of tweets about George Floyd in the days after he was killed by a police officer in which she described him as “a drug addict swindler”.
After the Oscars in 2021, Gascón posted: “More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films, I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M [Women’s Strike]. Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala.”
