Karla Sofía Gascón says life as a trans woman informed her role in ‘Emilia Pérez’

Karla Sofia Gascón is living the time of her life. She plays the title role in the new film Emilia Pérez, the world’s first Mexican cartel musical focusing on a trans woman, out now in U.S. theaters and streaming on Netflix starting Wednesday. It’s an audacious cinematic experience unlike any other, dreamed up by renegade French director Jacques Audiard (Rust and Bone, A Prophet, The Beat That My Heart Skipped).

Gascón became the first trans actress to win a major prize at the Cannes Film Festival with the Best Actress Award, which she shared with the movie’s other female leads — Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz and Zoe Saldaña. The feature also scored the Jury Prize following an 11-minute standing ovation. And there are now Oscar nomination whispers for Gascón.

When we first meet Gascón’s character, she is known as “Manitas” del Monte, a Mexican cartel leader who rules by fear and deadly force. But Manitas reveals to a lawyer (Saldaña) that she wants to undergo gender-affirming surgery and to live as her true self, as a woman. The cartel leader fakes her death and moves to London, emerging four years later as Emilia Pérez.

Gascón, who herself transitioned in 2018, insisted on playing both parts of the role. Audiard had initially intended for Manitas and Emilia to be played by two different actors.

“This just simply would not have been the same if you had had two different actors, an actor and an actress, a trans actor with a cis actress or cis actor,” Gascón told NPR’s A Martínez. “This was an opportunity and I pushed for it because this was something that had never been done … and this was perfectly constructed.”

Gascón, who is Spanish and lives in Mexico, had direct input into some of the scenes, which Paris-born Audiard changed as a result — despite the two not sharing a common language.

In one specific case, a scene was originally written to show Emilia exploding into physical violence against Manitas’ one-time wife Jessi (Gomez). But after input from Gascón, the scene was changed into simply an emotional fury.

Gascón describes the role as a character study of “the good and the bad” or “the light and the dark” that lives in all human beings.

The film similarly takes the audience on a journey from the depths of reckless violence to comedy — like a musical number (choreographed by Damien Jalet) set in a Thai plastic surgery facility where the patients on gurneys are sent twirling in concentric circles over explanations of “Mammoplasty! Vaginoplasty! Rhinoplasty!”

There are moments of delicate tenderness, such as one between Emilia and a child that evokes Michelangelo’s Pietà sculpture of Jesus and Mary.

Other scenes reach a philosophical plane, such as when Saldaña tells an Israeli surgeon: “Changing the body changes society.” It comes as little surprise, then, that Audiard had initially imagined the story as an opera libretto (based on Boris Razon’s 2018 novel Écoute, or Listen).

Manitas “was trying to survive and could not be herself in the world that she had to live in,” Gascón said. “So she had to pretend in order to survive. And that is something that we humans often do. We try to please others, but we are not living our own life. We’re not living for ourselves.”

That experience of losing yourself in a spurious identity is painfully familiar to Gascón, who recalls someone close to her abandoning her as she was transitioning. “In my case, I had to choose to live my own life. And in order to do that, I had to get out of the darkness … [I was] in this deep hole, lost and even wanting to leave this Earth,” she recalled.

Gascón says she brings her characters to life through what she has lived. “Without having been through misfortunes and the hardships of life, we cannot bring that on to a role,” she said. “Had I gotten this role about 20 years ago, I don’t think that that would have been able to give it the same depth that I’m giving it now at 52.”

In the film, her character’s physical transition is accompanied by a moral one, with Emilia launching a restorative justice charity that helps the families of cartel victims, including those once targeted by Manitas. She also falls in love.

“We cannot redeem, fix or undo our past sins. But what we can do is we can do things better,” Gascón said. “That’s the real message of the movie.”

Anticipating the millions of people who might see the film, Gascón spoke of a “social responsibility” that accompanies her role. “I would like to see this as a grain of sand to help marginalized communities to become less marginalized, to be able to be part of society regardless of your sexuality, your skin color,” she said. “It’s ridiculous that I’m the first, but at the same time wonderful.”

The digital version of this story was edited by Adriana Gallardo and Olivia Hampton. It was produced by Claire Murashima. The digital version was edited by James Doubek.