Zoe Saldaña and Karla Sofía Gascón on making the Jacques Audiard movie that took this year’s film festival by storm.
Photo: Shanna Besson
Emilia Perez is an unbelievably audacious film that feels like if Pedro Almodovar remade Mrs. Doubtfire as a searing musical crime drama. There’s so much going on in this movie — narratively, structurally, musically, theatrically, politically — that it almost shouldn’t work, which makes its quality all the more impressive. The story, which Jacques Audiard loosely adapted from Boris Razon’s novel Écoute, begins with Zoe Saldaña as Rita, a talented criminal defense attorney who’s overwhelmed and underpaid and spiritually lost. One day, she gets a phone call from a powerful stranger, who turns out to be a cartel kingpin named Manitas (Karla Sofia Gascón). Manitas has a secret, extremely lucrative request for Rita: to help him disappear from his life — including his children and his wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) — and seek gender confirmation surgery to live as a woman.
What follows is operatic in every sense, at turns melodramatic, heart-wrenching, and endlessly mutative. Manitas transitions in a quietly affecting series of scenes and becomes the luminous Emilia Perez, who, years later, finds Rita again to ask for help reconnecting with her family. Emilia, pretending to be one of Manitas’s distant relatives, invites a confused Jessi and her kids back into her life and home. Under this unorthodox new arrangement, all of the women and the children blossom. Rita and Emilia become like sisters and eventually open a nonprofit that seeks, in some ways, to right Emilia’s past wrongs by helping the families of Mexico’s thousands of missing people find their relative’s bodies and subsequent closure. Things are idyllic for a while, until they very much aren’t.
Everyone is operating at their peak here: Audiard, who takes endless risks that nearly all pay off; Saldaña, who has never been better, doing pitch-perfect vocal runs and hitting difficult choreo while emanating raw humanity; Gomez, who’s bruised, vulnerable and tough, playing in a new key. Gascón, a 52-year-old Spanish actress, who’s mostly done telenovelas up until now, is a total revelation. Her onscreen transformation from hardened, dysphoric crime lord to warm, loving matriarch, is so natural and magnetic that it should propel her to instant stardom. If the rapturous reception at last night’s premiere is any indication, we’ll be lucky enough to watch her onscreen for a long time. I sat down with Gascón (who spoke via a translator) and Saldaña on a hotel rooftop in Cannes to talk about all of it.
I loved this. I want to cry talking about it.
Zoe Saldaña: Mission accomplished. Just to tell and be part of a compelling story.
You were both crying a lot during last night’s premiere standing ovation. What was going through both of your minds?
Z.S.: It was the journey, from being asked to be part of a Jacques Audiard movie to getting to meet him. His whole team. How we all kept our heads down and did the work to bring the story to life. I felt like I was a part of it. I didn’t feel like I was just in it. I saw so many of my choices in the movie last night, so many of the ideas that Jacques had conveyed and I’d tried to the best of my ability to interpret.
Karla Sofia Gascón: First of all, the movie last night is not the one we shot. The film I shot was pleasant, funny and light. And then here all of a sudden he takes us on this roller coaster. From the very beginning, when the song starts and you hear Selena’s voice, and then it turns all of a sudden to reality, I thought, Oh, gosh. He’s taking us somewhere.
You both came to this movie from very different career points. Zoe, you’re an established Hollywood actress, and save for Center Stage, this is so different from what you’ve become known for. Were you worried at all about the risks and the musicality and the maximalism of it? There’s a world where this movie really doesn’t work but it works so well and I want to know how you knew that it would.
Z.S.: I never feel established. As an actor, I always feel like, “This is the last thing I’m gonna do.” When you’re not working, you’re watching other people’s stories and how cinema is evolving and you want to be a part of that. So in a way, Emilia Perez and a filmmaker like Audiard are much more aligned with who I am as an artist. How I curate art in my life, how I consume it, how I put it in my home, how I raise my children, how I love with my partner. It represents much more the sort of stories I’d be reading in a book or watching when I’m not working. Established is very kind, but I always feel like I haven’t grown enough. I’m always curious about what’s on the other side. Not because I’m ungrateful. But I’m thirsty! I dream a lot. Watching Jacques Audiard’s movies and thinking, I wish I could be a part of something like that. There’s gift of being able to step outside of a market that you’ve gotten to recognize, when you’ve always dreamed of working with masters in their own right.
I just hadn’t seen you do this sort of singing or dancing on screen before. I didn’t know you had it like that! In another life you could be a popstar.
Z.S.: [Laughs.] No, God. In my shower!
Karla, was the experience similarly unbelievable for you?
K.S.G.: Working with movie stars like Zoe and Selena, and Jacques, and Edgar Ramirez — for me, it’s a complete dream. But I couldn’t take it in in fan mode. It would have been dangerous. When you enter a movie like this, you need to prepare another way. So I am so grateful for Zoe for being really friendly with me from the very beginning. To open up and allow me to connect to her. We were really like friends. We get along well and sometimes we fight [laughs], but if I was 20 and I had been too impressed, or in fan mode, then it would have been an obstacle for me to give my best and to work on the project. I respected all of my comrades — I’m an actress, Zoe’s an actress, and we embarked on the same journey together. She was my partner on the set. She came home with me to celebrate my birthday, the only person on set who did that.
Z.S.: Karla and Jacques are both masters. I don’t think I ever interacted with Karla on set. I interacted with Emilia. The level of commitment … The film is called Emilia Perez, and it’s the journey of this human being who, during the course of their lives, will be helped by individuals like Rita, but they have to fulfill their journey. Understanding that every day, there were moments I’d come to work being like, I need to hold my cool. Everybody is intellectual, asking questions. My questions were more like, “Is this my mark?” “Do I start on this beat?” There’s so much more that you learn by observing them in their natural elements as artists than anything else. I always felt like I walked away learning from Karla and Jacques, every fucking day.
Was there a specific scene or moment on set when you felt you actually bonded as friends?
K.S.G.: What was magic on the set is there was a kind of transfer. The characters contaminated us as actors. The characters’ strong, mysterious bond, we could feel it between us. Some of the lines, for instance, when she insults me, I really felt it from her gut, that it came from her.
Z.S.: But I think the bonding happened a year before. Because it was a really long process. Karla had already been given the role for both characters, first for Emilia, then for Manitas. And then I knew Jacques had chosen me, but for some reason, we had to stop for a year. And I came back to Paris and I was so nervous. I thought maybe he’d take me out of the project. That I wouldn’t have the role anymore. And he’s really difficult to approach when he’s creating. He’s extremely silent, he’s not someone you can really get a firm answer from. I was so nervous and Karla was like, “That’s the way he is. Don’t worry. We have it.” So we built this bond and this mutual trust.
Karla, last night seemed like a really life-changing moment for you. Does it feel that way for you? What do you want next for yourself?
K.S.G.: I’m 52, and neither successes nor failures have changed my life. I’ve been through so many things. Ups and downs, wonderful and disastrous things. I’m having great fun here. I’m really enjoying it. But no matter what happens, it won’t change who I am inside.
Zoe, in the press notes, you talked about doing away with the idea of representation, that you stopped thinking about it in order to “relieve yourself of social responsibility” and to instead prioritizing your own work and dreams. I’m curious if both of you feel that way and want to elaborate on that as it relates to this movie.
Z.S.: I don’t put a label on my craft. My craft is gender-fluid, age-fluid, race-fluid, spirit-fluid. I need to keep that for myself so that I can have a journey that doesn’t always entail carrying the weight of the world. And I think that’s a strong message for younger artists: You do have the responsibility to live a life that’s morally aligned with your core values, and so those who are looking up to you have a good example. But that can’t be why you wake up every morning to make art. You have to fulfill your ego and your spirit. So I didn’t join this movie because it was a trans story. I joined it because it was Jacques Audiard, who I believe to be a very decent human being, and who is aligned with the kind of art that moves me and changes me, makes me a better person. Because it’s a story about human beings and their most human, cellular selves, failing and hurting and struggling and finding strength. That is what drives me. If that becomes a positive message for those who need it, it’s a double win. But at some point you do have to choose a path that fulfills you.
