Transgender-identifying Oscar nominee Karla Sofía Gascón is continuing on his apology tour, this time with an hour-long CNN interview discussing the controversial tweets that got him in so much trouble.
Gascón made headlines last month after becoming the first trans-identifying person, and first man, to be nominated for Best Actress at The Academy Awards after starring in “Emilia Pérez.” That prestigious nomination has since been mired in controversy, however, after old tweets the actor posted resurfaced that opined on Muslims, George Floyd, and other hot-button topics.
The actor issued a formal apology, but it wasn’t enough to rectify his reputation ahead of the Oscars. In a CNN en Español interview Sunday morning, Gascón described the extreme backlash, per Deadline.
After assuring the audience that he is “not racist” and again extending the “most sincere apologies to all the people who may have felt offended for the way I express myself in my past, in my present and in my future,” Gascón said, “I believe I have been judged, I have been convicted and sacrificed and crucified and stoned without a trial and without the option to defend myself.”
The actor also said he understands the struggle of black people.
“I feel and very much identify with the people who were thrown off buses for the color of their skin, with the people who did not want them to study at university, for the people who were hated simply for existing, like how I am hated in this moment,” Gascón said.
The actor also described a “relationship with a wonderful woman who is a Muslim” who taught him “about respect and to understand perhaps better than in the past.”
The actor cried while recalling alleged abuse after the tweets went public. “I have not stopped receiving hate, death threats, insults, abuses. I have not seen anyone who has come out, in any media, any space, any place, raise their hand for me and say, ‘Hey, what is happening with this person who you are massacring?’ And no one, no one has lifted a single finger for change.”
When asked about a tweet calling Floyd a “drug addict and a hustler,” Gascón said at the time he was treating social media like a “diary” and writing “reflections as opposed to something that can influence someone, because before being here my post was viewed by three people.”
Gascón said he has “nothing to hide” and a “clean conscience.”
“If the whole world thinks that I am that bad of a person that I have to return to my home and such, then I will go home with my family, my cats and with the people who love me and I will continue my life like I have done so before, [where] I have never lacked a plate of soup because I have made it honestly without hurting anybody in this world,” he said during the interview, per Deadline.
The actor also confirmed he’s not voluntarily dropping out of the Oscars race. “I cannot step down from an Oscar nomination because I have not committed any crime nor have I harmed anyone,” Gascón told the network. “I am neither racist nor anything that all these people have tried to make others believe I am.”
