I bet the Brits would love a day off from controversy, but that is not in god’s plan, apparently. The BAFTAs delivered controversy last night in two different ways. First, let’s talk about the lead acting categories, the site of a major upset (if you don’t pay attention to British cinema).

Jessie Buckley won Best Leading Actress for her performance in Hamnet, strengthening her position going into the SAG Awards next weekend. She is nominated there once again against Rose Byrne, who has been her closest competition this awards season, but Rose hasn’t won a major award against Jessie yet. (At the Golden Globes, they split the drama and comedy categories between them.) Maybe that will change with the SAGs, and if it does, we have a race going into the Oscars, but if Jessie wins next weekend, too, it’s over. The Oscar will be hers.

On the dudes’ side of the aisle, Timothée Chalamet, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Michael B. Jordan were all upset by English actor Robert Aramayo, the star of the biopic I Swear (it has not opened yet in the US, so it is not Oscar eligible alongside). Aramayo is best known for TV work on this side of the pond, starring as Young Ned Stark in Game of Thrones and Elrond in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. I Swear is his breakout film role, evinced by winning two BAFTAs: Best Leading Actor and the EE Rising Star Award, which is voted on by the public. So he got the approval of his peers and the audience last night.

For the Oscars, this means that the door is still open for The Secret Agent star Wagner Moura. He was not nominated at the BAFTAs, but Aramayo isn’t an option for the Oscars, so the British Academy voters will have to pick someone else at the Oscars, and, well, they’ve already shown they’re not going for Timmy, Leo, or MBJ. However, Wagner Moura is also not nominated at the SAGs, so we still don’t have a strong frontrunner in the lead actor category. My gut is leaning more toward Moura with each passing week, but the fact that we cannot get these guys into a head-to-head competition with voters who actually matter is so frustrating. I want to see what Moura’s actual peers will do! But I have to wait until Oscar night! I hate it!

There was another controversy more serious than a category upset, though. The subject of Aramayo’s film, I Swear, is Tourette Syndrome awareness activist John Davidson. One of Davidson’s tics is echolalia, in which he vocalizes automatically, and in Davidson’s case, as depicted in the film, this often results in Davidson shouting inappropriate and/or offensive words. During the BAFTAs, Davidson swore several times from the audience, and then, when Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan were presenting the award for best visual effects, he shouted the n-word.

I am not including a video as it is an upsetting and degrading moment for everyone involved. Davidson left the ceremony of his own volition, and host Alan Cumming made several remarks throughout the night about his audible exclamations, including “We apologize if you are offended tonight” to the audience after Davidson left. There was also an announcement to the audience BEFORE the show that Davidson has Tourette’s and people “might hear some involuntary noises or movements during the ceremony”.

This is just very unfortunate for everyone. Davidson cannot control his tics, he left less than 30 minutes into the presentation, but it did not stop Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan from being humiliated and having to press on with a dumb trophy handoff. The whole thrust of Davidson’s activism is that with awareness comes grace and understanding, and there was clearly an attempt to create that atmosphere for his attendance, but it did not ultimately work because of the specific word said.

Photo credits: ZUMAPRESS.com/MEGA/WENN, Cover Images/Instar Images

Share this post