When the 2025 Oscar nominations were announced bright and early Jan. 23, one of the most promising headlines bursting through the fog of the morning was that Karla Sofía Gascón, who plays the titular character in awards season heavyweight “Emilia Pérez,” was the first openly trans person to be nominated for an acting role. It was a reason to celebrate, a win for the trans community and their allies after a week that began with Donald Trump’s inauguration, where he was keen to mention that he’d be rolling back protections for trans people nationwide. But as happy people were for Gascón, there was also a good deal of head-scratching that followed.

“Trans women are always framed as villains, as people trying to attack the status quo. When Gascón falls, it makes us all look bad.”

Since its debut at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, “Emilia Pérez” has divided audiences and critics. Some view the flashy musical thriller about a cartel leader who decides to transition both to escape her enemies and become her true self as an audacious work of provocative cinema. Others have decried its depiction of transness as regressive, falling into old, incorrect tropes about trans people trying to deceive others and spectacle-izing the act of transitioning. Such rampant discourse has turned “Emilia Pérez” into the most talked about film of this year’s awards season, a sensation that translated to a whopping 13 Oscar nominations.

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But unlike the old adage, not all press is good press. A few days after Gascón received her nod, journalist Sarah Hagi unearthed some of Gascón’s inflammatory posts on social media, which were still live at the time of her nomination. From there, it was a firestorm, with users searching for and amplifying Gascón’s hate-filled posts about everything from George Floyd’s murder to the Islamic population in Spain; she even managed to get in a dig at Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One” while judging the film for its diverse cast. Despite Gascón issuing numerous apologies, fellow “Emilia Pérez” cast members Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez, director Jacques Audiard and the film’s distributor, Netflix, have all distanced themselves from Gascón. Suddenly, the film’s trans star —whom Audiard and Netflix were all too happy to hinge their awards season campaign on — went from the token image of progressive filmmaking to a pall hanging over the film’s already murky legacy.

“Gascón being revealed to be a racist ultimately reinforces the same narratives around trans people,” says Jessie Earl, a filmmaker and content creator whose videos chronicling the “Emilia Pérez” controversies have amassed over 500,000 collective views. “Trans women are always framed as villains, as people trying to attack the status quo. Because we have given up ‘manhood,’ [we’re seen] as the antithesis to how our society is built. That gets even worse when you consider the tokenization because our culture likes to prop up people as representatives of our entire community. So when Gascón falls, it makes us all look bad.”

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But Earl points to another 2024 film that also tackles transitioning from an abstract viewpoint, Jane Schoenbrun’s “I Saw the TV Glow,” as an opposing force to “Emilia Pérez.” Schoenbrun’s film also ran in the festival circuit and garnered meager awards buzz. But “I Saw the TV Glow” didn’t boast the same name recognition and awards-ready sparkle to make it a contender against Audiard’s movie. Though, now that “Emilia Pérez” is in limbo, Earl believes it’s the perfect time to point to the fundamental differences between the two films, and why Oscar voters are afraid of movies that ask viewers to question institutions like the Academy, instead of catering to them.

Below, check out our full interview with Earl, who dissects the stereotypes that “Emilia Pérez” reinforces, the cautionary tale of making a trans film from a cisgender gaze and whether........

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