Rebel Wilson, we salute you. As Bafta host, the Australian actress transformed what is usually a rather dry ceremony into some kind of comedy roast. No one was safe, as she tore through topics including the war (“welcome to the 75th, and final, Baftas”), her own much discussed weight loss (“I did not lose weight for a guy, I did it to get more acting roles”), the return to an IRL ceremony (“actors... you can stop doing those wellness podcasts”) and partygate (“the afterparty is at 10 Downing Street”).
She made the movie stars in attendance squirm, from describing Sir Kenneth Branagh as “the only director not afraid to give Armie Hammer a job” and rocking up next to Benedict Cumberbatch with a deranged looking cake of his face. Even those who were absent were in the firing line: Wilson joked that Leonardo DiCaprio “does like them young” and said Best Actor winner Will Smith’s best performance was “being OK with all his wife’s boyfriends”. Perhaps her best received joke of the night, though, was after introducing American and British sign language interpreters for CODA star Emilia Jones’s performance of Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now (which was goosebump-worthy, by the way). Raising a middle finger she said, “In all sign languages, this is the gesture for Putin”.
