It might be one of the hardest jobs in showbusiness, but there are certain tricks to being a good awards show host: insider-outsider status; personal jokes that punch up, never down; a zinger delivery; and keeping Will Smith’s wife’s name out your mouth.
This year, the Baftas chose Richard E Grant to host the 76th annual film awards ceremony, which takes place at the Royal Festival Hall in London on Sunday. The celebrated actor, 65, is tasked with making a three-hour statue ceremony entertaining for celebrities in the theatre and the millions of punters watching at home.
And the pressure is on, especially after Rebel Wilson’s hosting divided viewers last year, with audiences complaining that too many jokes – including those about the royal family, Vladimir Putin and the gender pay gap – failed to land for some. Wilson’s predecessors Graham Norton and Joanna Lumley also drew criticism.
Anna Smith, host of the Girls On Film podcast and former president of the UK Critics’ Circle, told the Guardian a successful awards show host was “relaxed, effervescent, witty without being too scripted, generous and kind to those coming up on stage, while also moving them on swiftly when required”. They also had the ability to “improvise and deal with unforeseen issues with grace and humour”, she added.
“Grant definitely falls into the ‘National Treasure’ bracket of previous hosts Stephen Fry and Joanna Lumley – he’s popular with the public as much as the industry, he’s drily witty and also quite unpredictable and fun on stage,” Smith said.
Grant himself said this week that he would be a “celebratory person rather than somebody who’s there to roast other actors” and speculated that he was picked for the job because he was “so unashamedly enthusiastic during the awards circuit” in 2019.
That year, the Swazi-English actor – who rose to prominence with his performance in Withnail and I – was nominated for a Bafta, Oscar and Golden Globe for his role in crime biography Can You Ever Forgive Me?. After the nods, Grant posted a video of himself in front of his first flat in London, saying “I’m absolutely overwhelmed. Thirty-six years ago I rented this bedsit here and I cannot believe I am standing here now with an Oscar nomination”. His overjoyed reaction seemed so charming and genuine that the video instantly went viral.
During that awards circuit, Grant’s wide-eyed campaign of celebrity selfies and exuberant videos won over both fans and PR experts. He ran around “like an unabashed golden ticket winner”, transporting his social media followers on a journey through Hollywood luncheons and chatshow sofas. “Being uncool made me – very briefly – cool, which was odd, but lovely,” he told the Guardian in an interview. Other headlines focused on his late blossoming.
But Grant is an actor of three decades, with almost 100 titles under his belt, including The Age of Innocence, Gosford Park, Persuasion, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and Downton Abbey.
He grew up in Eswatini (then Swaziland) and moved to London in his 20s. Appearing on Desert Island Discs last year, he spoke about his upsetting childhood, including an accidental encounter with his mother and her lover in a car, and an incident in which his father chased him with a gun.
Such candidness was prevalent in Grant’s most recent memoir A Pocketful of Happiness, which detailed what it was like to care for his late wife Joan Washington during the latter stages of her lung cancer (Washington died in 2021).
In the book, Grant also discussed snubs against him within the entertainment industry, and described how A-listers such as Nicole Kidman suddenly befriended him following the Oscar buzz around Can You Ever Forgive Me? “She swans elegantly towards me, saying: ‘I hope you win every award coming your way, cos you’re heartbreaking and brilliant.’ No denying the sea change from her polite greeting at Telluride [film festival] eight weeks ago, before she’d seen the movie,” he wrote.
The actor retains one foot in and one foot out of the elite fame club he has observed for so many years. He commissioned a sculpture of his hero Barbra Streisand’s face for his garden. He has said he is “such a fanboy” of fellow thespians that he found it an “incredible privilege” to meet this year’s Bafta nominees, including Colin Farrell andMichelle Yeoh.
His only hope is that no one gets slapped live on TV, he’s said, a reference to Will Smith slapping last year’s Oscars host Chris Rock for joking about his wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith.
“I’m going to be singing like Billy Crystal, dancing like Fred Astaire, funnier than Bob Hope, more beautiful than Joanna Lumley,” the actor teased.
