A beautiful quartet: Karla Sofía Gascón, a Spaniard who made a late gender transition, the Americans Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez and the Mexican Adriana Paz were rewarded with an ensemble prize for female performance for “Emilia Perez” at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.
Karla Sofía Gascón, 52, plays the title role, a ruthless Mexican drug lord, who decides to transition and become a woman. She is the first trans woman to win this prize at Cannes. The actress changed sex at 46.
“To all the trans people who suffer so much. I want these people to believe that it is always possible to improve,” she thanked, alone at the microphone, on the stage of the Palais des Festivals.
“I’m not going to lie to you, for me, working as Manitas was a lot more fun than Emilia Perez. Playing a Mexican drug dealer, with a different voice than mine, and singing… It made me seemed like a magnificent piece of work,” she told the press in the preceding days in Cannes.
Because, yes, we must add to this crazy story the scenes from musicals, so much so that some critics have spoken of “narcomusical”.
Like her character, she is a woman who always loves women. Karla Sofía Gascón is married and has a daughter. “They came to Cannes. At the gala, they cried like madeleines.”
“My daughter is 13 years old. It’s been a very difficult, very complicated journey. Especially for my wife. I met her when she was 18, in a nightclub in Alcobendas (Madrid metropolitan area), imagine. But it’s It’s wonderful what’s happening.”
“Rekindled a fire”
The actor he was began acting in the 1990s in popular series in Spain such as “Isabel” and “El súper”. Then the actor emigrated to Mexico. Where is the action of “Emilia Perez” supposed to take place, which was ultimately mainly filmed in the Paris region.
Next comes “Nosotros los nobles (2013)”, one of the biggest cinema successes in Mexico. It is the financial comfort acquired thanks to this film which will decide her to begin her complete transition.
Zoe Saldaña, 45, plays Rita, a lawyer on the verge of burnout who agrees to work for a sex-changing drug kingpin. This film “reignited a fire” in her, which she previously “used to maintain on her own”.
Queen of blockbusters, she explored the confines of the universe, in the blue skin of Neytiri in “Avatar” (2009) and “Avatar 2” (2022) by James Cameron and lent her features to Gamora, a green-skinned mercenary , in Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” (2014, 2017, 2023) and in “Avengers” (2018, 2019).
But it was another skin color that caused her controversy, when she was criticized for having darkened her skin in order to play the African-American singer Nina Simone.
Kidney transplant
“There’s not just one way to be black,” the actress told Allure magazine in response to criticism. “I’m black as I know how to be. You have no idea who I am. I’m black. I raise black men. Don’t ever think you could look at me and address me with such disdain “, she replied, scathingly.
Born June 19, 1978 in New Jersey to parents from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, she grew up in Queens, New York.
31-year-old pop star Selena Gomez plays Manitas’ wife Jessica, a smaller role. She already has around twenty films to her credit alongside her musical career, and stars in the hit series “Only Murders in the Building”.
She has more than 427 million followers on social media. In 2017, Selena Gomez announced that she had undergone a kidney transplant, as part of treatment for lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease from which she revealed she was suffering in 2015.
Mexican Adriana Paz, 44, in a smaller role, plays Emilia Perez’s girlfriend.
