Entertainment
All About the Controversies Surrounding the Netflix Musical
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- Emilia Pérez leads this year’s Oscar nominations, with star Karla Sofía Gascón making history as the first openly transgender Best Actress nominee
- But public figures and audiences alike have criticized the Jacques Audiard movie’s depiction of trans issues and Mexico
- Gascón has recently apologized after coming under fire for old social media posts, the latest in a series of controversies for the film
There’s no movie quite like Emilia Pérez, a musical thriller from French filmmakers about a fictional Mexican cartel leader transitioning into a woman. Despite being an unprecedented, genre-mashing original, the Netflix film has also emerged as awards season’s most controversial contender.
Writer-director Jacques Audiard’s musical has steadily generated buzz starting with a glowing 2024 Cannes Film Festival reception where it won the best actress prize. The latter was shared between Emilia Pérez’s four stars: Karla Sofía Gascón, who plays the kingpin-turned-titular character; Zoe Saldaña, as the beleaguered lawyer helping Emilia transition in secret; Selena Gomez, as Emilia’s unsuspecting wife and mother of their children; and Adriana Paz as Emilia’s eventual lover.
Gascón, 52, would also go on to make history as the first openly transgender actress to receive best actress nominations at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Golden Globes, Academy Awards and more.
“I am who I am; know who you [are],” the Spanish star said onstage at the Globes on Jan. 3 when Emilia Pérez won for best comedy or musical motion picture.
KC Armstrong/Deadline via Getty
“The light always wins over darkness,” she added, speaking to the movie’s themes of gender-affirming empowerment. “You can maybe put us in jail, you can beat us up, but you never can take away our soul, or our resistance, or our dignity.”
But even before Emilia Pérez led the 2025 Oscar nominations tally on Jan. 23 with 13 nods including Best Picture — the most-ever for a predominantly non-English-language film — the film was under scrutiny. While the likes of Guillermo del Toro and Meryl Streep voiced support, critics gave it a mixed reception (review site Rotten Tomatoes lists it as 74% certified fresh), and moviegoing audiences ranked it among the year’s worst (19% on the Popcornmeter as of Jan. 31).
Transgender and Mexican viewers became increasingly vocal upon the movie’s Nov. 13 streaming debut on Netflix, with several film clips going viral. GLAAD, the LGBTQ advocacy group, called Emilia Pérez a “profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman” and a “step backward for trans representation.” Writing for the publication Them, Fran Tirado criticized Audiard’s story as “an idea of transness so completely from the cis imagination.”
Other commentators and social media users questioned the authenticity of Audiard and his actors’ portrayal of modern Mexico. Critic Gaby Meza told ABC News it was “not in the trans experience, not in the narco experience.” On her Hablando de Cine podcast in December, Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez agreed with Meza when she criticized Gomez’s performance in the film, saying Spanish was “neither her primary nor secondary language nor fifth,” per The Hollywood Reporter. (After Gomez, 32, responded to a TikTok clip of the interview by writing, “I’m sorry I did the best I could with the time I was given,” Derbez posted an apology to her.)
Shanna Besson/Pathé
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Recently, Gascón has come under fire for comments she made in interviews and old social media posts. After journalist Sarah Hagi shared screenshots of several of the Oscar nominee’s posts on X (formerly Twitter) focusing on Muslim culture, George Floyd, diversity and more, Gascón deleted the posts, issued an apology, then deactivated her X account on Friday, Jan. 31.
In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter that day, Gascón said a “campaign of hate and misinformation” caused her to close the account. “Perhaps my words are not correct, many times due to ignorance or pure mistake. I apologize again if anyone has ever felt offended or in the future. I am a human being who also made, makes and will make mistakes from which I will learn. I am not perfect.”
Medios y Media/Getty
How might these controversies affect Emilia Pérez’s prospects at the upcoming SAG Awards, BAFTA Film Awards and Oscars? One X user, linking to Hagi’s posts, wrote that they are “curious” about how award voters will handle Gascón’s “vile tweets.” The actress’ “bigoted” and “violent” social media posts “have blown up awards season; the only possible comparison is to Will Smith storming the Oscar stage to slap Chris Rock,” opined Daniel D’Addario for Variety on Jan. 31. “It’s raised existential questions about how her campaign, or, at its end, her Oscar night, can go on.”
Emilia Pérez is now streaming on Netflix. Ahead of its controversies, Tom Gliatto presciently called it “the year’s biggest, strangest movie extravaganza” in a film review for PEOPLE.
Entertainment
‘Euphoria’ kills off Jacob Elordi’s Nate Jacobs

He’s not feeling euphoric.
Warning: Spoilers ahead! Do not proceed unless you’ve watched “Euphoria’s” seventh episode of Season 3.
“Euphoria” catapulted Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney and Zendaya into their current status as A-listers, and now, one has been axed from the show.
Season 3 killed Elordi’s controversial character, Nate Jacobs.
He was buried alive in a coffin, with a pipe leading to the surface so that he could breathe. A rattlesnake slithered down the pipe and bit him.
He had been placed there by Naz (Jack Topalian), the gangster he owes about a million dollars to.
Naz’s plan was to leave Nate down there (with a pipe to breathe) for 72 hours while his wife, Cassie (Sweeney) could get the money together.
Unfortunately for Nate, before 72 hours was up, a snake got him. Naz also didn’t make it out alive, as he was fatally shot by Season 3’s other gangster, Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Cassie and Maddy (Alexa Demie) scrambled to get the money together as Nate got dug up, but they got a nasty surprise, as they were met with his dead body.
In the “inside the episode” segment at the end, Elordi said in his post-mortem interview, “It was a cool way to go, Nate is somebody who’s made so many mistakes and so many dark choices.”
First premiering in 2019, the Sam Levinson-created drama initially followed its characters in high school. Elordi, Zendaya and Sweeney were lesser known at the time.
“Euphoria changed my life,” Elordi, 28, told Variety in 2023.
“Saltburn” was the Australian star’s big-screen breakout that same year. Per Vogue Australia, his “Wuthering Heights” co-star Margot Robbie (who produced “Saltburn”) suggested him for the role at the time after watching him in “Euphoria.”
The “Frankenstein” star told GQ UK in 2023 that before landing on the HBO show, “I wasn’t booking jobs. I think I had – I don’t know, $400 or $800 left in my bank account – and ‘Euphoria’ was my last audition before I went home for a little while to make some money and recuperate.”
In the first two seasons, Nate was the show’s villain. He was a high school jock with anger issues – he manipulated, threatened and blackmailed everyone around him, choked his then-girlfriend, Maddy (Alexa Demi), and struck up a relationship with her best friend, Cassie (Sweeney).
Nate’s issues stemmed from finding his father Cal’s (Eric Dane) sex tapes at a young age.
In Season 3, which is set five years after high school, Nate had a dramatically different personality.
His rage issues inexplicably seemed vanished, his demeanor was softer and nicer and he appeared to genuinely love Cassie (instead of using her, like he was in Season 2).
Instead of being menacing, he did a goofy dance at his wedding. After he didn’t get his way in front of a board of bureucrats, rather than blackmail or threaten them, he just pathetically cried and begged.
Outraged fans criticized “Euphoria” for Nate’s inexplicable personality change and slammed it for giving the character a “lobotomy.”
Season 3 saw Nate take over his dad’s construction business, but he ran into issues when he had to stop his build because of an endangered flower – the white fritillary.
The show also revealed that he conned people into giving him money for his construction projects, including the gangster Naz.
In the third episode of Season 3, when Nate didn’t pay Naz the half a million dollars he owed him, Naz interrupted Nate and Cassie’s wedding and had him brutally beaten on his wedding night. It all culminated in Naz cutting off Nate’s toe. However, Nate later got it sewn back on.
Topalian exclusively told Page Six that Elordi did most of his own stunts during the scene where Naz’s henchmen threw Nate around.
“That’s [Elordi] really doing the struggling and the fighting and the falling and all of that,” he told us.
He called Elordi “committed,” “giving,” and “prepared,” but “between scenes, he’s back to being Jacob.”
“Obviously, he gets back into character really quickly,” he went on. “But once [the director calls ‘cut’] even though he’s been beaten and abused, he’s still having a lot of fun. He’s still cracking jokes and doing things like that.”
Elordi told Entertainment Weekly in November that his acting process was different in Season 3. He noted that he likes to “obsess over” his work, and take the time to prepare by going through “every element and construct it and put it together.”
The booked and busy actor – who was in “Frankenstein” and “Wuthering Heights” back to back – noted that he had “no time” to prepare for Season 3.
“And I didn’t have scripts in any kind of full sense. I sort of just had creative conversations with Sam, so I had no choice.”
The “Priscilla” actor also noted that he “loves” Nate, even though most fans hate him.
“I act to understand a different experience, to express an experience that’s different to my own,” said Elordi. “Playing him taught me a lot about empathy and patience, which is strange with a character like that.”
Elordi also told the outlet that Nate’s dark deeds didn’t bother him.
“It’s a real treat to be a part of that show, and to play the quote-unquote bad guy,” he said. “It’s always more fun. You don’t wanna play some morally superior, world-saving loser.”
Entertainment
Robert De Niro had no idea ‘Taxi Driver’ would become a classic

You talkin’ to him?
Robert De Niro had no idea his 1976 film “Taxi Driver” would be lauded as a classic.
“You never can think that you’re doing something that’s going to have an impact,” the actor, 82, exclusively explained to Page Six in a recent interview alongside his fellow Tribeca Festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal to promote next month’s event.
The Oscar winner “just never look[s] at it that way,” he adding, noting that success is “out of your control.”
The neo-noir drama, directed by Martin Scorsese, stars De Niro as an unhinged taxi driver named Travis Bickle, whose mental state deteriorates over the course of the movie.
De Niro acted in the iconic role alongside Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Peter Boyle, and Albert Brooks.
The project generated controversy at the time for graphic violence and 12-year-old Foster’s casting as a child sex worker — and, later, for inspiring John Hinckley Jr.’s attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.
Nevertheless, it is considered one of the greatest movies ever made and, in 1994, was designated as “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant by the U.S. Library of Congress when selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
The movie, which turned 50 this year, is being screened at the June film festival — and De Niro and Scorsese, 83, will reunite for a conversation about the project.
Their sitdown is just one of many special talks and screenings taking place at this year’s 25th Tribeca Festival.
Not only are interviews with Madonna, Sean Penn and Josh Safdie also scheduled, but there will be special anniversary screenings of “Cable Guy” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary.”
“There are so many great things to see,” Rosenthal told us. “There’s so much music, everybody from Earth, Wind and Fire and Madonna to Noga Erez and Sarah Bareilles and Peter Frampton.
“There’s just a lot to see,” the 69-year-old continued, stressing that the festival is “a welcome festival for all New Yorkers [with] tickets available” now.
The annual event, which runs from June 3 through June 14, was established in 2002 to spur the revitalization of Lower Manhattan following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
Entertainment
Laura Clery praises first responders after being crushed by fridge

Comedian and social media star Laura Clery praised the first responders who helped her after she was pinned beneath a 600 pound fridge in a freak accident.
Clery was seen in an Instagram video wearing a neck brace while speaking with emergency workers in an ambulance.
“So I was crushed by a 600 pound fridge,” Clery said as she looked up at two firefighters. “Is that correct?”
One of the mean — both of whom wore navy blue uniforms — responded, “Yes.”
A dazed Clery then looked into the camera before the clip ended. She wrote atop the video, “Shout out to these actual HEROES who pushed a 600 pound fridge off of me.”
“This was right after the fentanyl hit and all of my pain [went] away (instantly) I just need to say THANK YOU to these AMAZING firefighters who saved my life!!” the YouTuber captioned the video on Saturday.
“Truly. They got there so fast, broke through my garage door, and 3 of them pushed a 600 pound fridge off of me and got me safely to the trauma unit before things got worse.”
Clery also reflected on how “differently this could have gone” and said she felt “overwhelming gratitude.”
“No broken bones, my kids are okay and safe, I can walk… I’m so lucky!” she continued, praising the personnel as being “calm, kind” and handling “everything like absolute heroes!”
“And then right as one of them pushes the fridge off me, he goes, ‘Wait… I watch all of your videos!’ and they all start hyping me up 😭 like sir… I am currently being flattened but thank you 😂”
She concluded the post, “Forever grateful for these men. Real life angels. 😭🙏❤️”
In the comments thread, Clery admitted that she was “nervous” about fentanyl before it was administered, “but the pain was so severe that they injected it into me and thank God I had no craving to do it again as a recovering addict,” she wrote.
“That’s something we have to think about even when facing an immense amount of pain.”
Clery, 39, shared details of the “most terrifying night of [her] life as a single mom” in an Instagram upload on Thursday.
She said she was getting ready for bed earlier this week when her “600 pound fridge slammed into me and pinned me against the counter.”
During the terrifying incident, she “couldn’t move” and “couldn’t breathe” and that her kids Alfie, 7, and Poppy, 5 — whom she shares with ex-husband Stephen Hilton — were in the house at the time.
“Thank God it didn’t fall on my kids,” she wrote atop a video of her being transported to an ambulance.
The social media personality was able to reach into her pocket for her phone and call 911. “It took three firefighters to lift it off me,” she said. “I’m still shaking.”
She was also able to text Hilton writing, “I’m dying. Come by now now now.”
In the video, Clery could be heard complaining of severe pain following the incident.
She later shared that her son Alfie, who is autistic, had toppled the weighty refrigerator while climbing on it and that it wasn’t “properly mounted into the wall.”
Clery also stated that she wants to “f–king sue the contractor” who installed the fridge and called the oversight “negligence.”
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