Karla Sofia Gascon describes her long journey to the gender-switching role she plays in Emilia Pérez.
“When I was little, I played football,” says Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofia Gascon. “The day I was going to do a test for Real Madrid’s youth academy, it was raining and my mother didn’t let me go. She feared I would end up covered in mud. At the time I got really mad but now I thank her because that led me to the path I’m on now.”
Although, she adds with a mischievous smile, “I would have probably shaken things around there too, becoming the first Real Madrid player to switch to the women’s team.”
And what a path it has been. Gascon plays the title role in Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language musical about a thuggish Mexican drug lord named Manitas who transitions to become a woman called Emilia – a benevolent millionaire who tries to undo the evil of her past life in a violence-torn Mexico. Gascon’s work playing both sides of the character earned her the best actress award in Cannes alongside co-stars Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz, and also the best actress award at the European Film Awards on December 7.
Having taken the spotlight in Cannes and this awards season, Gascon is not going to let go of it easily. She is savouring every minute of this well-deserved attention after years of hard work, having had to start her career anew when she decided to transition in her late forties, facing trolling and abuse in the process.
Both issues were addressed by the 52-year-old actress when she gave the acceptance speech on behalf of herself and fellow castmates in Cannes. Gascon was moved, but did not falter in conveying a message of hope to all actors and actresses “who knock on doors that never open”, also dedicating the award to “all the trans people that are suffering abuse every bloody day”.
She predicted correctly that social-media abusers would take aim at the win – right-wing French politician Marion Maréchal among them – but insisted on “the message of hope. As Emilia Pérez shows, we all have the opportunity to become better people. Time to change, cabrones [bastards].”
Chosen as France’s entry for the international feature Oscar, Emilia Pérez is produced by Why Not Productions and Audiard’s Page 114 with Pathé. It has been a box-office success in France, with 1.06 million admissions. Netflix gave the film a limited cinema release in North America and the UK, and launched it on its streaming platform in mid-November.
Longstanding passion
Gascon, who signed with UTA in the US after Cannes, says that her passion for acting had been brewing since she was young. Her parents did not have the means to pay for acting school, “so I took some courses when I could”.
Her career has been what she describes as “a long, hard road” from her first jobs as an extra. “I think my first part was holding a lance and shouting something like, ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’ in a Spanish TV series,” says Gascon.
After collaborating with Mexican director Julian Pastor in 2005 TV series El Pasado Es Mañana, he suggested Gascon go to Mexico. The first job there was period telenovela Corazón Salvaje, “one of the best parts I have done on TV,” says Gascon. “They didn’t think I was the right fit to play a gypsy so I had to convince them – a bit like with Emilia Pérez, where I had to bombard Audiard with a ton of videos to make them see I could play Manitas as well as Emilia.”
It was at age 46 that Gascon decided to transition. “There is often controversy around trans childhood, so to clear things up, I knew who I was when I was four years old,” she says. “But it was impossible to take any steps for somebody who grew up when Spain was nearing the end of a dictatorship. Just wearing a pink jumper in those days could cost you a black eye. So I tried to adapt as well as I could and that often drove me, like Manitas, to a certain over-masculinisation… You know, that’s something I just realised talking with you now.
“I never thought I would get the chance to work again,” she continues of life after transition. “I even received death threats, but that toughened me up. I fought back.” The first big break came with 2022 Netflix series Rebelde. “I had to adapt, of course,” she says.
The title role for Emilia Pérez came to Gascon while she was working in Mexico, where she lived for 15 years before moving back to Spain. “I was first contacted by the people who were working on the music in Mexico to see if I could learn some songs. Audiard had checked me out online, although he was initially looking for somebody younger. When I finally met him in Paris in 2022, it was love at first sight.”
Still, it was a slow process, and Gascon admits she did many casting tests with Audiard, trying to convince the filmmaker she could play both Emilia and Manitas. “It took months to confirm I was in. The day he called via Zoom, he just went, ‘Karla, both characters are yours.’”
Intense preparation
Preparing the parts was no easy feat, admits Gascon. “I did a lot of training to get the physicality right for both characters. Emilia’s poise was probably harder to get, with protocol and dance lessons, than Manitas, which was more fun to play.”
She took inspiration from several sources, including Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now and the Spanish-dubbed version of Rambo to help inform alpha-male Manitas. “For Emilia it was Catherine Deneuve, but also somebody who will be less known outside Spain but who was key, TV presenter Anne Igartiburu.”
The singing was another challenge. “I have never even dared to try karaoke,” she says. “While I pride myself as an actress that does not need many takes on set, that was not the case at the recording studio. I did many, many takes there.”
Gascon also had to get to grips with the Mexican accent. “The speech coaches had me hasta la madre [sick to death], as they say there, working on it. I sometimes begged them to let small details go but they told me I would thank them down the line. They were right.”
The actress is full of praise for her fellow Emilia Pérez stars and, of course, for Jacques Audiard. “I had only seen one of his films before I met him, The Sisters Brothers, which helped me not to be weak at the knees when we started working together. He has an extraordinary energy but he met his match – I tired him out.”
Having often had to wait for the phone to ring in the past, Gascon says that it now “rings all the time, with offers for films and series, but I have to say no because I’m still fully devoted to promoting Emilia Pérez. I hope they can wait until 2025.
“I gave it my heart and soul,” she says of her breakthrough film. “Jacques has allowed me to acknowledge my potential. For the first time in my life, I can see myself on the screen with such joy and enthusiasm, and think, ‘Karla, I have no regrets.”
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