Bill Kramer, CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is speaking out about the controversy surrounding Best Actress nominee Karla Sofía Gascón (from “Emilia Pérez”) and her extremely problematic tweets that were recently resurfaced ahead of her return to the spotlight.
“The Academy does not condone hate speech — I want to be very clear about that,” he said while on THR’s Awards Chatter podcast on Thursday.
“Karla’s nomination is historic. That’s really important. She’s still a nominee. We honor that, but we do not condone hate speech. All nominees are invited to attend the show. That stands,” Kramer continued. “If Karla joins us for the night, I hope there is an air of respect. We have over 200 nominees. The night is about much more than one person. We are there to celebrate all of our nominees.”
Gascón does intend to attend the 97th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, March 2. Netflix had made a conscious decision to pull her out of smaller ceremonies and celebrations leading up to the big night after past tweets resurfaced regarding everything from Black Lives Matter to Islam (during the Oscars when “Parasite” won Best Picture, she wondered if the awards had become an “Afro-Korean festival”).
She is the first trans actress to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, which is what makes her nomination “historic,” as Kramer noted.
