Netflix is finally speaking out public about the controversy surrounding it’s Oscar-nominated film Emilia Perez and it’s star Karla Sofia Gascon.
Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria opened up about the controversy during an appearance on the podcast, The Town, where she was asked about Karla‘s past offensive tweets.
Keep reading to find out more…
“I think it’s really a bummer for the 100 incredibly talented people who made an amazing movie,” Bela shared on the podcast. “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 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. It really is a bummer for a lot of the people, like [co-stars] Zoe [Saldaña] and Selena [Gomez]. And in our awards team did an incredible campaign for that movie.”
When asked if the streamer would reexamine their vetting process for talent, Bela 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.”
“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,” she added. “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.”
If you missed it, Netflix pulled back their support of Karla amid awards season, and they also stopped paying for her accommodations to attend events.
Since, Karla has released apologies, and more recently, she vowed to take a step back from the public.
The Emilia Perez director also reacted to Karla‘s resurfaced tweets and subsequent apologies, revealing he hasn’t spoken to her since this all has gone down, and he doesn’t want to.