Selena Gomez has responded to criticism of her performance in the Netflix film Emilia Pérez.
The musical comedy focuses on a mob boss who wishes to secretly transition and start a new life. Directed by French filmmaker Jacques Audiard, the film is set in Mexico and is in English and Spanish.
The criticism came from the Spanish-language podcast Hablando de Cine, where episode guest and actor Eugenio Derbez discussed the director not understanding the language and culture he was portraying, as well as the performance of non-native Spanish speaker Gomez.
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Host Gaby Meza agreed, stating: "I feel like she doesn’t know what she's saying. If she doesn’t know what she’s saying, she can't give her acting any nuance" (translated by Variety).
Gomez - who has been nominated for best supporting actress at the Golden Globes for her role - commented on a TikTok clip of the podcast, writing: "I understand where you are coming from.
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"I'm sorry I did the best I could with the time I was given. Doesn't take away from how much work and heart I put into this movie."
Derbez actually responded to her response, apologising and calling his comments about her performance "indefensible".
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"As Latinos, we should always support one another. There's no excuse. I was wrong, and I deeply admire your career and your kind heart," he said.
"Emilia Pérez deserves to be celebrated, not diminished by my thoughtless remarks. I'm walking away from this with an important lesson learned. While I understand if you cannot accept my apology, please know it comes from the heart."
In an interview with Digital Spy, Gomez also spoke about having to "abandon all of my old habits as a performer" in order to commit to the discipline of singing and dancing in a musical.
Emilia Pérez is available to stream on Netflix now.
Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish.
