Exclusive | How Oscars 2025 might handle the Emilia Perez Karla Sofia Gascon controversy according to a writer

And the controversy goes to …Oscars season wouldn’t be the same without a scandal, and the 2025 Oscars has a doozy. “Emilia Perez” star Karla Sofia Gascón, 52, who is the first transgender woman to get a “best actress” nomination, saw her awards campaign fall apart after her controversial social media posts resurfaced in January.Carol Leifer, a former “Saturday Night Live” writer who has also worked on “Seinfeld” and has written for the Oscars for many years, weighed in on how this year’s host Conan O’Brien and his team of writers might handle the scandal.Leifer, 68, is prohibited from revealing details about Sunday’s ceremony, but notes, “it really comes down to whoever’s hosting, whether they want to shine a light on that, or they want to sidestep it.”After Gascón came under fire for her old social media posts, Netflix reportedly ditched the actress from the campaign. “‘First out trans actress to receive an Oscar nomination is a massive bigot’ feels like a Ryan Murphy subplot,” one person joked on Twitter amid the controversy. At the 2025 SAG Awards — which she was conspicuously absent from despite getting nominated — her co-stars Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez came out onstage to talk about their film and show clips that minimized Gascón’s presence in the movie. But, it’s also been reported that Gascón will attend the Oscars, after all. Leifer, who has also been a writer on “Hacks” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” explained, “I think each host has kind of a sixth sense with their hosting style, whether they want to address [a controversy] or not.It’s usually something more lighthearted.”For instance, Leifer recalled when former host Billy Crystal leaned into a last-minute gag during the 2000 show.“[Singer] Erykah Badu was one of the presenters, and she came out wearing a very big headdress that was kind of high.

Billy came backstage after she came off like, ‘What else can we do, guys? Anybody ...