Selena Gomez and Édgar Ramírez: ‘Emilia Pérez’ is not a political movie’

The question makes actor Edgar Ramírez jump out of his seat. The Venezuelan actor, the sole male star of Emilia Pérez, is rising to the defense of his castmate Selena Gomez. A journalist wants to know the U.S. singer and actress’ opinion on the abundant criticisms that have been made of her Spanish, a controversy that roiled social media even in advance of the debut of Jacques Audiard’s film in Mexican theaters. Gomez is unfazed. “My relationship with Spanish is very similar to [my character] Jessi’s. I think it helped me identify with her a bit more,” said the artist in an interview with EL PAÍS carried out in Los Angeles last fall.

Much has happened since then. Emilia Pérez has become a phenomenon, racking up 13 Oscar nominations, a record for a foreign-language film. Members of the Academy did not see fit to nominate Gomez herself, though along with the rest of the film’s ensemble cast, including Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoé Saldaña and Adriana Paz, she did win Best Actress at Cannes. Gascón became the first trans woman to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, which will be awarded at the March 2 ceremony. At the same time, their French musical about a Mexican drug trafficker who transitions and leaves behind a life of violence has generated a wave of controversy. GLAAD snubbed the film entirely at its annual awards ceremony, and considers the movie to be a “profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman.”

“It’s very interesting to see how people have opinions on the movie. It’s not for everybody,” said Gomez in the interview. The star, who recently got engaged to her boyfriend, producer Benny Blanco, was dealing with her surprise over a critic having called the U.S. audiences who have applauded the Netflix film “stupid.”

Some of that toxicity has fallen upon Gomez, a U.S. citizen with Mexican heritage who was born in Grand Prairie, Texas, just outside Dallas. She’s been criticized over her performance as the spouse of the film’s drug trafficking protagonist. Also, over her Spanish, which has garnered virulent response, particularly among Latin American audiences.

“In Texas, it’s the same as California — it’s bilingual everywhere. I started working when I was seven, and all of my jobs were English-speaking since I was young. So, I feel a little sad that I lost it, but as you can see, it’s still there. I need to nurture it and take care of it. It’s very crucial to my identity,” says Gomez, who has delivered some work in the language in the past. In 2021, she put out an EP called Revelación that features seven songs in Spanish.

She began her career dancing and singing alongside the purple dinosaur Barney, but has since acted for directory Harmony Korine, the onetime king of indie film. Recently, Gomez found success in Only Murders in the Building, a series in which she stars with two comedy veterans, Martin Short and Steve Martin. But Audiard’s musical allowed her to show a side of herself that isn’t always apparent in the roles she plays.

Her paternal grandmother, she says, left Monterrey, Mexico for the United States in 1973. “It took her 18 years to get citizenship. I wouldn’t have been here if it wasn’t for the sacrifices made by the women in my life,” she says. Her parents separated when she was five years old. She lived with her mother, Mandy Teefey, but Gomez remained close to her Latin roots because of the time she spent with her father. “There’s so much about Mexico that they taught me that was so beautiful. But I almost feel like it’s equally heartbreaking. I have family, beyond the family I have in Texas, that deal with these kinds of issues, from violence to domestic violence,” she says.

Emilia Pérez has also been panned over its naïve portrayal of the drug wars, a violent panorama that has engulfed Mexico for nearly 20 years, and that serves as backdrop for the supposed moral transformation that capo Manitas (Gascón) makes after her gender transition, becoming an activist for those who have been disappeared. Audiard, who has been nominated for the Oscar for Best Director, said in an interview with this publication that he hadn’t been looking to make a narco movie. “The film talks about the violence, but doesn’t show it,” he said.

Ramírez is familiar with how problematic such film portrayals can be. “This is the first time I’ve played something like a narco. I never wanted to accept it, for personal reasons,” says the actor, who was born in San Cristóbal, a town located on the border of Venezuela and Colombia. “My family was affected by the terror of Pablo Escobar and I experienced it as a child. I mean, I am a survivor of the narco terrorists,” he adds.

Ramírez and Gomez agree that Audiard’s story has a different focus. “I think we really made a movie that celebrates the independence and the freedom that these women want, and there’s redemption in that,” says the actress. By her side, her castmate, who plays the role of the narco Gustavo Brun, adds, “I think there is a sublimation here. I don’t think it is a political movie, that it has political intentions. [Using] poetry to talk about the horror of our countries, I think, is something that is appreciated.”

In the film, the duo performs the song Mi Camino, which has received one of the movie’s two Oscar nominations in the category of Best Original Song (the other is for El Mal). “For me, this movie is a perfect pop song,” says the actor, who sees the Oscar-nominated track as being reminiscent of the genre’s Mexican bands in the 1990s, like Kabah and Onda Vaselina. Perhaps, Emilia Pérez contains something of the pop of our time.

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