At the start of awards season, Emilia Perez looked like it could come away as one of this year’s big success stories.

First there was a slew of gongs at the Golden Globes, including best comedy or musical film, and then came the Oscar nominations – it leads the race with 13 nods, and broke the record to become the most nominated non-English language film in the history of the awards.

At the BAFTAs this weekend, it is shortlisted for 11 prizes; just pipped by papal thriller Conclave, which has 12. And star Karla Sofia Gascon has made history as a trans woman nominated for best actress at both ceremonies.

Set in Mexico but mostly filmed in France, Emilia Perez is an operatic Spanish-language musical which tells the story of a Mexican drug lord who undergoes gender affirmation surgery. In May last year, it won the Cannes Film Festival jury prize, setting it on its trajectory to 2025 awards season success.

The film’s acknowledgement seemingly reflected the more progressive attitudes of voters in recent years – but as its profile rose, so did the scrutiny.

US LGBTQ+ advocacy and cultural change group GLAAD has described Emilia Perez as a “step backward for trans representation”, and highlighted reviews by transgender critics who “understand how inauthentic portrayals of trans people are offensive and even dangerous”.

The film has also come under fire for stereotypical depictions of Mexico and an apparent minimal inclusion of Mexican people among the main cast and crew. Of its main stars, Gascon is Spanish, US actress Zoe Saldana is of Dominican Republic and Puerto Rican descent, and Selena Gomez is American, though her father was of Mexican descent. Adriana Paz is Mexican.

In a post on X in January viewed more than 2.7m times, Mexican screenwriter Héctor Guillén shared a mock-up poster saying: “Mexico hates Emilia Pérez/ Racist Euro Centrist Mockery/ Almost 500K dead and France decides to do a musical/ No Mexicans in their cast or crew.”

While stories about “narco” crime in Latin America have long been depicted on screen, Emilia Perez has been particularly criticised for its handling of the subject. Since 2006, a bloody war between Mexican authorities and the drug cartels has raged, claiming the lives of more than 400,000 people, according to government data. More than 100,000 have gone missing.

Read more:
Mexico: Women at war
The city ravaged by a brutal and deadly drugs gang war

Offensive? Or a ‘crazy marvel’?

General audiences appear to have made their thoughts clear. On film database site IMDB, Emilia Perez gets 5.5 out of 10, while its nine competitors in the running for best picture at the Oscars rate between 7.3, for The Substance, and 8.8 for I’m Still Here.

On review site Rotten Tomatoes, Emilia Perez gets a 72% from critics, but just 17% from audiences; again, the rest of its Oscars competitors range from Wicked’s 88% critics’ score to I’m Still Here’s 96%, or Nickel Boy’s 65% audience score to I’m Still Here’s 99%. The two takeways? The gap is clear whichever way you look at it; watch I’m Still Here.

That’s not to say Emilia Perez does not have its supporters. Speaking after a screening in October, Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro said it was “so beautiful to see a movie that is cinema“, and hailed director Jacques Audiard as “one of the most amazing filmmakers alive”.

A review in US entertainment outlet Deadline in May during Cannes last year was headlined, “Jacques Audiard’s musical is crazy, but also a marvel”, with the writer saying the “sparkle never outshines the essential seriousness of the subject”. In Variety, another US entertainment publication, the headline praised Gascon’s electrifying performance.

Paz, who shared the Cannes best actress prize with her co-stars last year, has questioned the criticism about the film being “offensive” to Mexico, saying: “I really want to know why, because I didn’t feel that way.”

Carlos Aguilar, a film critic originally from Mexico City who writes for the Roger Ebert film website, was generally positive in his review, giving the film three out of four stars.

However, he highlights that Emilia Perez is “not a Mexican film” and notes “Mexican audiences have grown accustomed to American perspectives exploiting narco-related afflictions for narratives unconcerned with addressing its root causes”.

Questioning intentions behind these productions is valid, he says, “but to decry Audiard for partaking in the common filmmaking practice of telling stories away from what’s immediately familiar to him would seem an overly simplistic assessment”.

Karla Sofia Gascon’s resurfaced tweets

But the criticism from some trans people and some Mexicans is not a good look for a supposedly progressive film about a trans woman in Mexico. All publicity is good publicity does not apply here.

A lot of this criticism, though, had been made before the Oscar and BAFTA nominations. Emilia Perez was still riding high at that point.

The nail in the coffin came after those nominations were announced, when offensive tweets posted by Gascon were unearthed. They were old, but not that old; the first dated back to 2016, but some were more recent.

In the since-deleted posts, Gascon took aim at Muslims’ dress, language and culture in her native Spain and suggested Islam should be banned.

And less than a month after the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in 2020, which prompted a global reckoning about police brutality and racism, Gascon called Floyd a drug addict who “very few people ever cared” for.

Writer Sarah Hagi, who screenshotted the posts and shared them, wrote: “This is all from the star of a movie that is campaigning on its progressive values, you really gotta laugh.

Gascon, who was a regular in Mexican telenovelas before transitioning in 2018, issued an apology after the posts emerged, saying that “as someone in a marginalised community, I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain”.

She added: “All my life I have fought for a better world. I believe light will always triumph over darkness.”

‘This is an opera, not a criticism of Mexico’

At the London Critics’ Circle Awards earlier this month, Gascon’s co-star Saldana called for people to be “abstract with your idea of redemption” and to keep “minds and your hearts open, always”.

But it looks like the damage has been done. While Saldana is still favourite to win best supporting actress at both the BAFTAs and the Oscars, and the film may win gongs for its music and maybe technical accolades, it seems the momentum for taking home any bigger prizes has gone.

As the backlash intensified, Audiard gave an interview to Deadline last week. He said he had not been in touch with Gascon and that he was “very sad” to see the issue “taking up all the space” around the film. What she said in her tweets was “inexcusable”, he added.

Read more:
Oscars 2025: The full list of nominees
BAFTAs 2025: The full list of nominees

The filmmaker also addressed criticism about representation of cartels and drug crime, saying: “Opera has psychological limitations. It seems I’m being attacked in the court of realism.”

Audiard said he never claimed to have made a “realistic” work or a documentary. “For example, I read a review where it said that night markets in Mexico City don’t have photocopiers. Well, in night markets in Mexico City, one also doesn’t sing and dance. You have to accept that is part of the magic here. This is an opera, not a criticism of anything about Mexico.”

Finally, asked if he had any regrets or if there was anything he would do differently, he said the one regret was that the film was not made in Mexico. “And the simple reason for that is that the film funding, the public funding for film in Mexico was not as good for us as what was available to us in France”.

Emilia Perez now heads to the BAFTAs and Oscars embroiled in controversy. But it is not the first. Remember British star Angela Riseborough’s nomination in 2023? Some, like Green Book in 2019, weathered it out to win. And Will Smith won his Oscar just moments after slapgate in 2022.

We’ll see at the BAFTAs on Sunday and at the Oscars next month, how forgiving voters will be about Emilia Perez.

Free agent Alex Bregman has a new home after agreeing to a three-year, $120 million deal with the Boston Red Sox on Wednesday night, sources told ESPN’s Jesse Rogers.

The $40 million annual salary is $10 million-plus more per year than other teams were offering, sources said. The deal includes two opt-outs and deferred money.

Bregman, who was the biggest free agent remaining on the market, is expected to play second base for Boston, sources said, after primarily playing third for the Houston Astros since 2020. He gives the Red Sox another big bat to go with a retooled pitching staff after the team acquired Garrett Crochet via trade and signed Walker Buehler and Aroldis Chapman via free agency earlier this offseason.

Boston manager Alex Cora wanted Bregman badly, having previously coached him in Houston. And with the contract, the Red Sox made a big-money splash after guaranteeing only $52.3 million to free agents this winter, leading to significant frustration from a fan base of a team that hasn’t been to the postseason since 2021.

Bregman, who previously played all nine seasons with the Astros, had received interest from several teams, with the Detroit Tigers, Toronto Blue Jays and Chicago Cubs most heavily linked to him, along with Boston and Houston. The Tigers offered him a six-year, $171 million deal, and the Astros were around six years, $156 million, sources said.

Bregman’s right-handed bat has a track record of success at Fenway Park. In 21 career games there, he has a .375 batting average with seven home runs and 15 RBIs. His career 1.240 OPS at Fenway is the best in major league history among players with at least 90 plate appearances.

After slumping mightily at the start of the 2024 season, Bregman’s bat began to come around in June and the rest of the team followed, as the Astros ultimately jumped the Seattle Mariners to claim their seventh AL West title in eight years.

Bregman, who will turn 31 on March 30, finished the season with a .260 batting average, 26 home runs and 75 RBIs in 145 games. Houston lost back-to-back AL Wild Card Series games to the Tigers.

The two-time All-Star had surgery after the season to remove a bone chip from his right elbow, and agent Scott Boras said Bregman, who has exclusively played third base since 2020, was willing to move to second base if needed.

The Red Sox already have star Rafael Devers at third, so Bregman’s expected move to second would allow him to stay there. And while Bregman has logged only 32 innings at second in his major league career, Cora referred to him last month as someone he envisioned as “a Gold Glove second baseman” when the two were together in Houston.

Bregman, who is coming off a five-year, $100 million contract, slashed .275/.376/.488 with 157 home runs and 554 RBIs from 2017 to 2023, compiling 34.2 FanGraphs wins above replacement, eighth most among all position players. Overall, he has a .272 career batting average with 191 home runs and 663 RBIs.

He rejected a one-year, $21.05 million qualifying offer by the Astros on Nov. 19, meaning Houston will receive a compensatory pick after the fourth round of this year’s MLB draft. Boston will lose its second-highest pick for signing him and will forfeit $500,000 of international signing bonus pool allocation.

Bregman’s ascension directly correlates with the Astros’ run of dominance, as his first full season came in 2017, when the franchise won its first championship — a title later tainted by the sign-stealing scandal that led to the firing of general manager Jeff Luhnow and field manager A.J. Hinch.

The Astros went on to make seven consecutive appearances in the AL Championship Series and won another World Series, during which Bregman established himself as one of the game’s best third basemen and became, along with Jose Altuve, one of the team’s core leaders.

Bregman was originally drafted by the Red Sox out of high school in 2012, but he opted to go to college at LSU. Houston then selected him second overall in the 2015 draft.

The Red Sox will hold their first full-squad workout Monday in Fort Myers, Florida. They host the Astros in the regular season Aug. 1-3, then visit Houston Aug. 11-13.

News of Bregman’s deal with Boston was first reported by The Athletic.

Information from ESPN’s Jeff Passan, Buster Olney and Alden Gonzalez was used in this report.

The San Diego Padres filled a clear need in their starting rotation Wednesday, agreeing to terms on a four-year, $55 million contract with veteran right-hander Nick Pivetta, sources told ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

Pivetta’s deal, still pending the completion of a physical exam, includes opt-outs after the second and third seasons and is heavily backloaded. The contract will pay him a $3 million signing bonus and only a $1 million salary in 2025, then calls for salaries of $19 million, $14 million and $18 million from 2026 to 2028, sources told Passan.

The structure helps a Padres team that is trying to keep costs down for a second straight offseason and was already running a 2025 payroll of about $194 million, roughly a $30 million increase from where they were on Opening Day last year.

Pivetta, who will celebrate his 32nd birthday Friday, will likely slot in behind the Padres’ incumbent trio of Dylan Cease, Yu Darvish and Michael King, leaving Matt Waldron and Randy Vasquez, among others, to compete for the fifth spot.

One of few reliable starting pitchers remaining on the free agent market, Pivetta has been lauded for his durability, extension and propensity for missing bats.

With the Boston Red Sox over the past four seasons, he averaged 156 innings, posted a 4.33 ERA and struck out 26.9% of hitters. Last year, while posting a 4.14 ERA in 145⅔ innings, Pivetta finished with the lowest walk rate of his career at 6.1%.

Padres general manager A.J. Preller has navigated through a conservative, relatively quiet offseason since watching his team lose to the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Division Series.

Preller didn’t make an addition to his major league roster until bringing back catcher Elias Diaz at the end of January. Days ago, the team agreed to $1 million deals with Connor Joe and Jason Heyward, who will make up a left-field platoon.

The Pivetta deal, occurring at the start of spring training, represents the first big move of the Padres’ offseason. Given the absence of front-line starter Joe Musgrove, who will spend the year recovering from Tommy John surgery, it’s an important one.