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Zoe Saldana took home Best Supporting Actress at the 2025 Oscars, winning her first Academy Award and becoming the first Dominican American to triumph in the category — two career-defining accomplishments for any working actor today. But for some on the internet, her win stoked controversy and even outrage, as users on X took to the app to post angry gifs and declare that she’d committed a “robbery.” Why?
For those who might’ve been clocked out for most of the run-up to the Oscars, the answer is multi-pronged. In general, any win Emilia Pérez had this award season faced backlash online, and especially after the problematic tweets from its lead actress Karla Sofía Gascón surfaced online. But even before then, Emilia Pérez wasn’t well-favored: Slate straight up called it a “not good” movie while MSNBC’s critics named it the “worst” Best Picture nominee in years.
Much of the distaste stemmed fromEmilia Pérez offensive portrayal of Mexico as a violence-ridden, narcotics-ruled nation, as well as its heavy-handed transgender story line, which involved a drug kingpin undergoing gender-affirming surgery to escape persecution for his crimes. In Mexico itself, the film has been excoriated by the movie-going community; in the lead-up to the Oscars, a transgender Mexican director, Camila Aurora, in response to Emilia Pérez, released Johanne Sacreblu, a YouTube spoof of Emilia Pérez that explores French culture in the same simplified and reductive way Emilia Pérez does Mexico.
Another key point of criticism was the film’s music, which was largely ridiculed online. One particular scene of Saldana’s character talking to the surgeon about Emilia Pérez’ gender-affirming surgery went viral online for its especially cringey, unbelievable lyrics. As the surgeon describes what will go down during the procedure, he sings, “from man to woman, woman to man, from penis to vagina” — it doesn’t help that Saldana is involved in this clip. And in general, critics have noted the majority of the cast’s unremarkable singing abilities — including Saldana.
These two points combined with Karla Sofía Gascón’s tweets — which said wildly offensive things about George Floyd, Islam, and more — gave everything remotely related to the film a bad look. The controversy around her Oscar win was less about anything she specifically did, but more about the general backlash Emilia Pérez has received as a tone-deaf movie that’s now won several of Hollywood’s most prestigious awards.
Still, Saldana managed to create an emotional and memorable moment with her win during the Oscar’s ceremony as she tearfully thanked her mother, grandmother, and husband. Watch her acceptance speech, below.
