Bafta’s error was big on Sunday night - but it was in the editing, or the lack of. No one could have stopped John Davidson - who has Tourette syndrome - yelling out the N-word while two black actors, Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo, were presenting a prize. But given that they did use the two-hour time delay to judiciously remove Akinola Davies Jr’s shout of “Free Palestine!” and Alan Cumming’s comparison of the themes of Zootropolis 2 (“Lies, corrupt leaders, poisoning and persecution of a race”) to contemporary America, it seems a perverse decision not to remove an appalling racial insult, yelled involuntarily, from the TV broadcast.
Not least because it inevitably overshadows what should have been the big story: #BaftasSoWhite can (probably) be put to bed. As a reminder: the hashtag trended most critically in 2020, when no nominees of colour were up for any acting awards, leading to a massive overhaul of Bafta’s rules, regulations and membership demographic. Few organisations have done such radical work – the Oscars and certainly the Globes stagger way behind – yet few are still so perennially lambasted for choices that their members persist in sticking to.
