“I think it’s really a bummer for the 100 incredibly talented people who made an amazing movie,” Bajaria told Matthew Belloni on the journalist’s The Town podcast, via The Guardian. “And if you look at the nominations, and all of this awards love that it’s received, I think it’s such a bummer that it distracted from that.” She continued: “It really has kind of taken the conversation in a different way [from] this incredible movie that Jacques Audiard—who is an incredible director—has made. It really is a bummer for a lot of the people, like [co-stars] Zoe [Saldaña] and Selena [Gomez]. And our awards team did an incredible campaign for that movie.” For those following along at home, that’s three whole “bummers”. Gascón must be quaking in her boots.
In all seriousness, it sounds like Bajaria was hesitant to denounce Emilia Pérez because she (or the party line) still likes the film itself. “If you asked me today, everything that I know, we would still buy the movie today,” she said. “That movie is incredible and it’s creative and it’s bold. That’s what you want. You want to take those big swings.”
One thing Netflix probably could have taken a bigger swing on was its vetting process, which may have helped it avoid all this drama in the first place. (The tweets weren’t exactly hidden, after all.) “I do think it is raising questions for a lot of people about re-evaluating that process,” Bajaria admitted, although she expressed concern about the logistics of “look[ing] at the personal social media of tens of thousands of people, every single day around the world.” Maybe at least for the Oscar frontrunners, then.
Internally, “bummer” has reportedly translated into Netflix severing all ties with Gascón, who has repeatedly (and poorly) tried to apologize for her transgressions. The streamer scrubbed her from the film’s marketing materials, and the two parties are reportedly only communicating through her agent at this point. She’s also cancelled a bunch of planned campaign appearances and her Spanish publishers dropped her in the aftermath, The Guardian reports.
