“Emilia Pérez” director Jacques Audiard is speaking out as Oscar darling film‘s star, Karla Sofía Gascón, is embroiled in a PR crisis.

In a Q&A with Deadline published Wednesday, the French director distanced himself from the Spanish actress, who has made a number of public statements in response to her racist and xenophobic social media posts that an X user resurfaced last week.

“It’s very hard for me to think back to the work I did with Karla Sofía,” Audiard told Deadline. “The trust we shared, the exceptional atmosphere that we had on the set that was indeed based on trust. And when you have that kind of relationship and suddenly you read something that that person has said, things that are absolutely hateful and worthy of being hated, of course that relationship is affected.”

He called Gascón’s posts “inexcusable” and confirmed he has not been in contact with her over the past week. He said he does not plan on “getting in touch with her because right now she needs space to reflect and take accountability for her actions.”

“I haven’t spoken to her, and I don’t want to. She is in a self-destructive approach that I can’t interfere in, and I really don’t understand why she’s continuing,” he said. “Why is she harming herself? Why? I don’t understand it, and what I don’t understand about this too is why she’s harming people who were very close to her.”

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Gascón is up for best actress at the Academy Awards on March 2 and made history as the first openly transgender actress to receive an Oscar nomination. While offering her “sincerest apologies” for her past comments, which were seemingly posted as recently as 2020, Gascón has also denounced the people who brought her years-old posts to the forefront, writing, “They have achieved their objective, to stain my existence with lies or things taken out of context.”

“She’s really playing the victim,” Audiard said of Gascón’s recent statements. “She’s talking about herself as a victim, which is surprising. It’s as if she thought that words don’t hurt.”

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“Emilia Pérez” leads this year’s Oscars race with 13 nominations, and its stars have been busy promoting the Golden Globe-winning musical on the awards circuit. Audiard and his cast, including Selena Gomez and Golden Globe winner Zoe Saldaña, are expected at February industry events such as this Friday’s Critics’ Choice Awards.

However, Audiard said recent events have dampened the celebratory mood: “There’s something sad about it.”

In a Tuesday Instagram post, Gascón thanked Audiard as well as the “Emilia Pérez” cast and crew for supporting and understanding her process. She added, “They want to apply ‘cancel culture’ to me. I ask Hollywood experts, journalists who know me and have followed my career, how can we move forward?”

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Two days prior, she wrote a lengthy Instagram post saying she “will never ask for forgiveness” and defending her family as “the opposite” of racist. She also said her past social media posts were shared without context of world events “they were actually responding to.” That same day, she appeared on CNN en Español for a 50-minute interview with Juan Carlos Arciniegas.

Karla Sofía Gascón’s tweets criticized Muslims, Hollywood diversity

Before she deactivated her X account, Gascón had posts aimed at Muslim people and diversity at the Academy Awards.

In one of the posts dated Nov. 23, 2020, which was translated by USA TODAY, Gascón wrote in Spanish: “Sorry, is it just me or are there more Muslims in Spain? Every time I pick up my daughter from school there are more women with their hair covered and their skirts down to their heels. Next year instead of English, we’ll have to teach Arabic …”

In another post, the Oscar nominee also criticized The Academy for its 2021 awards show ceremony, the first following the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

“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.”

Contributing: Pamela Avila, USA TODAY