If Karla Sofía Gascón nabs an Oscar nomination for Emilia Pérez—and most award predictions suspect she will—she will become the first ever trans woman nominated for Best Actress. And she’ll absolutely deserve it for her captivating, multifaceted, heartfelt performance in Netflix’s musical drama, which will begin streaming tomorrow.
Written and directed by French filmmaker Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez is a Spanish-language “musical crime comedy” about a Mexican lawyer, Rita (Saldaña), who agrees to help a notorious drug cartel leader, named Manitas, secretly transition to a new life as a woman, named Emilia. Gascón, a Spanish actress who publicly transitioned in 2018, plays both Manitas and Emilia.
“Sometimes I get asked if playing Manitas was harder than playing Emilia,” Gascón said in an interview for the Emilia Pérez press notes. “But actually, it was the opposite. Playing Emilia was harder than playing Manitas. In the case of Manitas, he had a lot of physical freedom, but in his mind he was trapped. Emilia lacked that physical freedom because she always had to be perfect. Society has this requirement for women to always be perfect.”
As Manitas, Gascón embodies the stereotypical gruff, dangerous drug lord—deep voice, scruffy beard, face tattoos, and gold-plated teeth. But at the same time, Gascón infuses Manitas with a streak of raw vulnerability, at odds with his hypermasculine image. In the initial meeting between Rita and Manitas, the moment that the drug lord confesses that he wants to be a woman, his mannerisms change in an instant. Gascón lifts her hands to her face and tilts her head in a distinctly feminine gesture, and you immediately understand that this is not a joke. This is Manitas’ sincere, heartfelt desire.
In order to become Manitas, Gascón donned a face full of prosthetics. Emilia Peréz makeup artist Julia Floch-Carbonel said in an interview for the film’s production notes that Manitas’s look was inspired by Mickey Rourke’s character in the 2008 film The Wrestler.
“The reality is that Karla Sofía Gascón is a very beautiful woman with magnificent full lips and feline eyes, and we had to play around that,” Floch-Carbonel said. “Jean-Christophe Spadaccini, our SFX makeup artist, created perfect prosthetics — nose, cheeks, jaws, old acne, etc. — to make Karla’s face look as different as possible.”
Gascón helped advised the makeup team by sharing her experience with her physical transformation. “The most important thing was Karla’s testimonial and advice about the character,” fellow makeup artist Simon Livet said in the same press notes interview. “We didn’t want Manitas to be some sort of Mr. Potato of different parts and looks. We needed to see a man, but not with a thousand gimmicks either.”
After her surgery, as Emilia, Gascón comes alive. Emilia radiates joy in her new life, as well as remorse for her past sins. She wants to atone for the harm she’s inflicted on her country as a drug lord, and in some ways, she does. But old habits die hard, as they say.
Before she was cast in Emilia Peréz, and before she transitioned, Gascón appeared in the 2013 Telemundo crime drama El Señor de los Cielos and the 2013 Mexican film The Noble Family. But Emilia Peréz is undoubtedly her breakthrough role for American audiences. The role has already earned her the ensemble-based “Best Actress” award at Cannes, alongside her co-stars Saldaña and Selena Gomez, becoming the first trans woman to do so.
Barring any upsets, she’s expected to nab a nomination for Best Actress at the 2025 Oscars, too. She would be the first trans woman ever nominated in that category. (Elliot Page, a trans man, was nominated for Juno in 2007; and singer Anohni was the first trans woman nominated for any category, for her song “Manta Ray” in the 2015 documentary Racing Extinction.)
When she was asked how she feels about this potentially history-making nomination in an interview for the film press notes, Gascón replied, “First and foremost, before being known as a champion of trans and LGBTQI+ communities, I mostly see myself as someone who fought to make her dreams come true.” That said, she does want to see change in the treatment of trans people—an issue that feels even more urgent following the anti-trans platform adopted by many winning Republican candidates in the recent 2024 U.S. election.
“I wish we would stop being dismissed, categorized, and put into a box,” Gascón said. “I wish we would stop being made fun of, insulted, and hated. I personally got lucky in a way —thanks to my wife and my family, I was able to follow through with my transition while going on with my life. I wish we could all live in broad daylight and, most importantly, live normal lives.”