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Karla Sofía Gascón says she is ‘less racist than Gandhi’ on return to public eye

Actor suggests she may have been intentionally smeared but ‘no one has to forgive me’ after recent controversy

The Spanish performer, who became the first transgender woman to be nominated for a best actress Oscar, was dropped from the film’s campaigning materials by its studio, Netflix, and criticised by colleagues and prominent politicians after the series of old racist and Islamophobic tweets came to light. Ten days after revealing that the pain of the subsequent backlash had led her to “contemplate the unthinkable”, Gascón was on more bullish form as she appeared in Madrid on Thursday to promote her biographical book Lo que queda de mi(What’s Left of Me). Gascón told the reporters that she was “less racist than Gandhi” – despite the fact, she said, that people had tried to portray her as deeply prejudiced during what she termed “a social media massacre”.

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