Karla Sofía Gascón [Source: CNN Entertainment]

“Emilia Pérez” star Karla Sofía Gascón has had to pause her celebration for making Oscars history to offer an apology.

“I want to acknowledge the conversation around my past social media posts that have caused hurt,” Gascón said in a statement provided to CNN. “As someone in a marginalized 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.”

Gascón is the first openly transgender performer to be nominated for an Academy Award in an acting category.

Journalist Sarah Hagi shared screenshots of the actress’s past social media posts in which she criticized Muslims’ dress, George Floyd and the Oscars.

The posts were translated from Gascón’s native language of Spanish. One of them addressed the death of Floyd, who died in 2020 after an encounter with police in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“Honestly, I think that very few people ever cared about George Floyd, a drug addict swindler, but his death has served to once again demonstrate that there are people who still consider Black people to be … without rights and consider policemen to be assassins,” she posted. “They’re all wrong.”

The actress also posted critically about the 2021 Academy Awards, held after the Covid-19 pandemic had disrupted Hollywood and much of the world.

“More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films, I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M,” Gascón wrote. “Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala.”

She also posted about Islam and the Muslim community.

“Islam is becoming a hotbed of infection for humanity that urgently needs to be cured,” she wrote in a post from 2016.

Gascón was nominated for best actress for her performance in the Netflix musical/crime drama about a drug lord seeking gender reassignment surgery.