Harvey Weinstein’s legacy looms over 2025 Oscars controversies with Karla Sofia Gascon and Fernando Torres

Harvey Weinstein left many marks on Hollywood.

Some were positive — he championed independent and international features in the 1990s, ensuring their relevance in the mainstream zeitgeist — and some were definitely not — his sexual predation and culture of fear, silence and cover-ups.

One of the more pernicious is his influence on the Oscars and how they were fought for and won. The most infamous example is Shakespeare in Love, which in 1999 was crowned the best picture over Saving Private Ryan.

Even Harrison Ford, who presented the award and had the honour of reading out the winner, seemed underwhelmed. It was a shock. But perhaps not for those who had witnessed the brutal war that had erupted in the months leading up to the night.

That year, it was always going to be a dual, a two-horse race between Shakespeare in Love and Saving Private Ryan. Weinstein wanted to win and he ran it like it was politics. Aggressive campaigning, glad-handling, personal entreaties to voters to watch the film, tons of media spend and opposition research.

While Hollywood studios have always lobbied for their movies, Weinstein, who ran the studio Miramax, took it to another level. He reportedly backgrounded to journalists that Saving Private Ryan was not even that great a movie after the first 25 minutes.

Miramax’s LA president Mark Gill said in a 2019 oral history, “It as murderous the whole way through. I mean, the hours were ridiculous and the demands were insane, just unbelievably crazy stuff”.

When Weinstein’s film won, despite any disapprovals, everyone changed their playbooks. If you wanted that gold statue, you had to be ready to pay for it. In 2019, Netflix spent tens of millions on its campaign for Roma, which won three but not best picture.

There are rules around Oscar campaigning, which includes not making derisive comments about your competitors (Michelle Yeoh almost ran afoul of this in 2023) and no non-screening gatherings for voters after nominations were released.

On the surface, campaigns are mostly ad spends in Los Angeles and New York media, Q&A screenings, and flurry of publicity such as front cover feature profiles, panels with filmmakers and stars. Kieran Culkin and Colman Dolmingo’s viral actor-on-actor interview? That’s Oscars campaigning.

But Weinstein’s aggressive approach has become entrenched, and every time negative stories surface about contenders or nominees, there are always whispers and questions of which rival campaign was responsible.

It’s become harder in the social media age to trace how stories emerge or blow up. Was it organic or was it seeded? The Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively controversy exposed the dark arts and inner workings of crisis managers and publicity when it’s weaponised for harm.

This year’s Oscars race has unearthed several controversies, chief among them a seeming showdown between best actress nominees Emilia Perez’s Karla Sofia Gascon and I’m Still Here’s Fernanda Torres.

Gascon today was forced to apologise for resurfaced tweets she had posted in recent years, which started to make the rounds online the day before.

One criticised George Floyd, the American man who was murdered by policeman Derek Chauvin, supercharging the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. Gascon wrote that Floyd was a “drug addict and hustler” but largely empathised with the plight of Black people in the face of police violence.

There were also several posts in which she shared negative views of Islam. Translated from Spanish, one from 2020 said, “Until we ban religions that go against European values and violate human rights, such as Islam, under the protection of freedom or worship, we will not end part of the huge problem we face. Faith manipulates those who cling to faith” and “Islam is becoming an hotbed of infection for humanity that urgently needs to be cured”.

As others have pointed out, it’s almost unfathomable that those posts had remained publicly available on Gascon’s social media profile when she was in contention for an Oscar and had army of publicists, managers and strategists.

She, a Spanish transgender woman, apologised today, “I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt. As someone in a marginalised community, I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain. All my life, I have fought for a better world.

“I believe light will always triumph over darkness.”

Gascon has previously had to clarify comments she made to a Brazilian newspaper that “people working with Torres” was trying to tear her and Emilia Perez down.

“What I don’t like are social media teams – people who work with these people – trying to diminish our work, like me and my movie, because that doesn’t lead anywhere. You don’t need to tear down someone’s work to highlight another’s.

“I have never, at any point, said anything bad about Fernanda Torres or her movie. However, there are people working with Fernanda Torres tearing me and Emilia Perez down.”

At the risk of violating Oscar rules, she backtracked and said in a statement that she was referring only to “toxicity and violent hate speech on social media” and that Torres herself has been a “wonderful ally and no one directly associated with her has been anything but generous”.

Brazilian fans are notoriously passionate and invested. The country’s fan convention, CCXP, claims to be larger than San Diego Comic Con.

For her part, Torres has also had to apologise this week after a 2008 clip of her appearing in blackface was resurfaced this month. The clip was a sketch on Brazilian comedy show Fantastico.

She said in a statement, “I am very sorry for this. I’m making this statement as it is important for me to address this swiftly to avoid further pain and confusion.

“At that time, despite the efforts of Black movements and organisations, the awareness of the racist history and symbolism of blackface hadn’t yet entered the mainstream public consciousness in Brazil.

“Thanks to better cultural understanding and important but incomplete achievements in this century, it’s very clear now in our country and everywhere that blackface is never acceptable.”

Torres is a frontrunner against Demi Moore in the best actress race while French-produced, Spanish-language musical Emilia Perez, with its 13 nods is the most nominated film in this year’s race.

Emilia Perez has also been dinged for using AI to extend the vocal range of Gascon’s singing voice and blending it with professional singer Camille, after an interview its re-recording mixer Cyril Holtz gave in May, and in French, was resurfaced last week.

That came on the heels of the other best picture frontrunner, The Brutalist, running in an AI-related imbroglio after that film’s editor, David Jansco, gave an interview to an obscure tech publication called Shark News was shared widely on social media.

Jansco said the production used AI to smooth out actors Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones’ accents in their Hungarian dialogue, which forced The Brutalist director Brady Corbet to respond and insist that the actors’ performances were “completely their own”.

While there is every chance that social media and fans have organically surfaced and spread negative and damaging narratives, the whiff of Weinstein’s legacy remains. He turned winning an Oscar into a bloodsport.

Certainly, Gascon thought something more nefarious was at play, until she realised her initial accusations might’ve broken the rules.