For Saldaña, the versatile performer known for her blockbuster work in the Avatar and Guardians of the Galaxy franchises, Emilia Pérez was a rebirth. As Rita, Saldaña simmers in a finely calibrated performance that sees her character own her power once she’s given a new purpose. A dancer classically trained in her father’s native Dominican Republic, Saldaña worked tirelessly with Jalet, the film’s choreographer, to master the demanding dance sequences. 

The training was so rigorous, in fact, that she remembers nearly crawling up the stairs of her Parisian rental at the end of long days to soak in the tub. “It was rejuvenating,” Saldaña says. “It was a reconnection with my roots. I grew up onstage as a classical dancer. I’m from New York, so life in my head is a musical theater that never ends. I was grateful that I got to come back to that part of me, which I left behind when I started this wonderful career in film. The older I get, the more I realize I have been missing that part of my life. So getting this opportunity to go back to who I truly believe myself to be, it just felt like I was right at home.”

Meanwhile, Gascón froze in terror when she realized she would be singing not one, but a handful of songs. “When I got offered the role, I was told that I had to learn 48 songs by the next day, and I thought, O.K., great. I’m never going to do this movie, because I’m not a singer and I do not read music,” she says. “I have a good ear and I actually think I sing very well in the shower, but I had never worked with such exquisite music before.

“The hardest part for me was to sing in two different voices for the two parts of my character — one with a deeper register, and the other one with a higher pitch,” Gascón adds. “Neither of them is in my actual range. But the higher pitch was the hardest one for me, for my voice.”

Gomez stared down her own challenge, one that felt so overwhelming that she had to explore it. Her role required her to speak predominantly in Spanish, a milestone that might not surprise fans of her Spanish-language pop E.P., 2021’s Grammy-nominated Revelación.

“I’ve recorded music in Spanish, but I was much more nervous to speak Spanish for this film,” Gomez says. “My character is Mexican American, and that detail helped relieve some of the pressure I felt. Also, Jessi is a character we rarely see portrayed in films and on TV. She’s someone who is connected to her culture and identity while being totally honest about the duality of that experience. She doesn’t speak perfect Spanish, and that reflects the experience of so many Latinx people in this country and of my generation. It’s normal, and it felt really rewarding to be able to showcase that in this film and actually have it be a point of pride.”

The Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated Only Murders in the Building star worked closely with a dialect coach ahead of her audition and was relieved to learn Audiard hadn’t paid much attention to her multihyphenate career and global fame. “I was probably the most nervous I’d ever been for an audition,” Gomez says. “I loved that he didn’t really know who I was. He looked at me solely as an actress. There was no assumption, and it made me feel as though I really earned the role. He believed in me.”

Gomez is eager to see how fans react to a dramatic role that feels like a hairpin pivot for her. That was the allure. “I don’t ever want to do a role that comes naturally to me,” Gomez says. “I love challenging roles, and I love that this one is going to start a lot of conversations.”

Audiard and his casting directors were particularly attuned to assembling the right actors. “For a long time, I got lost in the casting,” says the filmmaker. “To be believable and endearing, I had to be able to lend these characters a past, a history, a real maturity. I realized this when I discovered Zoe and Karla almost simultaneously. And again when I met Adriana. In a way, they reoriented the script. Their own lives fed into the lives of the characters. And I would say the same about Selena. In the first versions of the script, Jessi’s character was written in a harder, more cynical way. Selena gave her more sensuality, fragility, and sincerity.

“Together, they give a marvelous, astonishing, and surprising performance,” the director says. “Thanks to them, Emilia Pérez doesn’t just tell the story of one woman.”

Saldaña shares the filmmaker’s pride in the fact that Emilia Pérez centers the remarkable stories of women in search of their own transformations. “There’s nothing stronger than a band of women coming together as a collective, as a united front, as one voice, to create harmony, magic, and art,” Saldaña says. “And that’s exactly what we all did. We took each other as we came, and we held space for each other. I praise art that is able to depict women just being marvelous and supporting one another.”

Gascón’s commanding performance, in particular, will be a revelation for audiences unfamiliar with her long list of credits, mostly in Spanish-language telenovelas and films, dating back to the mid-1990s. Even her co-stars were awestruck by Gascón’s deep investment in the role.

“This story is very close to her, and we all felt that,” Saldaña says. “What was impressive about Karla is that she had such a strong sense of who Emilia was, past and present, and she was so protective of it. It was really inspiring to see Karla working with Jacques, and the love and respect that they had for each other. Sometimes that passion was explosive, but it brought forward such magical performances from her. It’s incredible to witness an artist who can do that, who can go so deep and get lost in the character. I felt half of the time that I was just admiring it, learning from it, and feeding off of it.”

Gomez concurs. “I learned a lot about my craft from everyone on this film, specifically Karla,” she says. “She was able to maintain being Karla, but she would lose herself in the role and it would make me feel like, That’s how I want to feel. I want to give my all to something that I care about.”

For all their differences, Gascón says she shared mutual respect and a crucial similarity with her co-stars. “There’s something that this cast has in common, and that is a love for the work, a desire to do better,” she says. “Zoe is incredible, and I love her deeply. She was such a hunter to behold in the musical numbers. Selena has such a charm about her, and she’s full of heart and sensitivity, which really come across in her performance. Some of the most beautiful scenes that I’ve done, I did with Selena.”

Gascón’s breakthrough performance also happens to mark her first female role in a film since the actress began her transition in 2018 (after which she’s had turns on television, including in Netflix’s Rebelde reboot) and the emotional resonance is not lost on her. “This is the best work I’ve ever done in my life,” she says. “I broke through with this role, and I broke through some personal barriers in my acting. I’m always very hard on myself in everything I do. Every time I see myself onscreen, I always find something to fault. And this is the first time in my life that I’m able to see myself onscreen and I see nothing bad.”

She wipes away tears, careful not to smudge her eye makeup. “This really took me to another place, and I hope to be able to continue to go there and beyond,” she says. “With these two roles [in Emilia Pérez], it’s the same character, but it was very hard to get them out of my head, almost impossible. But such is the life of an actor, that you get into these roles and give yourself to them completely, and then they remain with you forever.”