Emilia Pérez: Selena Gomez launches Oscar-tipped film at London Film Festival

French director Jacques Audiard came up with the idea for the film after reading a chapter in Boris Razon’s 2018 novel Écoute about a drug lord who changes identity.

Audiard went one step further for the film, and made it a story of changing gender.

“I was less interested in a change of identity to evade competitor drug barons, and more interested in the change of identity for the sake of the person she was and is,” the director told BBC News. “I was more interested in the past and what led to that transition.”

The role required someone very specific – a trans actress, who was a Spanish speaker, who could also sing and dance.

Recalling the casting process, Gascón tells BBC News: “I was contacted when I was in Mexico by a production team, and was told ‘We need an actress as crazy as you – you’re the only one who can do this role, but you need to learn five songs for tomorrow!’

“And I was like ‘OK, let’s record the whole album and we’ll go on tour as soon as you want!’” she joked. “But I did say, ‘this is going to be difficult, I’m not a singer’. But the team in the film, they worked with me incredibly, they really helped me with all the songs and made it so that we could do the best work possible.”

Asked about Gascón’s casting, Audiard added simply: “Without her there would be no film.”