Karla Sofia Gascón is having a whirlwind year. I witness a mere fraction of it when she rushes onto our video call, ever so slightly delayed. “Excuse me for this crazy life I have,” she says, out of breath.
Even aflutter, she’s captivating. It’s summer, and the Spanish actor is in a strappy white sundress, with a milky manicure and honeyed brunette hair tumbling down her shoulders. She shows me Paris from her open window. That week, the film in which she stars, Emilia Pérez, will be greeted there by theater audiences and critics alike with the same high praise as at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the jury prize in May.
In the over-the-top new melodrama from French writer-director Jacques Audiard (Rust and Bone, A Prophet), Gascón plays a dangerous Mexico City drug kingpin named Manitas who undergoes gender-affirming surgery to fulfill his dream of being a woman, becoming the titular Emilia. And that’s merely the first act of this audacious, genre-transcending extravaganza of a film—did we mention it’s a musical?—which is in select theaters today with a Netflix streaming premiere on November 13.
Gascón’s tour de force performance, by turns terrifying, sly, comic, and stirring—with singing and dancing to boot—has been duly embraced by critics. She became the first trans woman to win the best-actress prize at Cannes, sharing it with costars Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and Adriana Paz. And many believe she could be the first openly trans actor nominated for an Oscar.
