Footage of Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black being assaulted by a BBC presenter in a Soho bar spat has been released for the first time.
Black was punched to the back of the head by social media influencer Teddy Edwardes when a late-night dispute at the Freedom bar in August last year turned ugly.
The US screenwriter husband of Olympic diver Tom Daley was the victim of the attack, but was then put on trial himself over an allegation he had grabbed and twisted Ms Edwardes’ wrist – spilling her drink - in the moments before the punch.
CCTV of the incident has now been released, after Black was cleared of assault at Westminster magistrates court with a judge branded the case against him as “weak” and concluding that Ms Edwardes had lied about the incident.
The footage shows Black in a heated discussion with Ms Edwardes, with Daley attempting to diffuse the row.
The assault allegation stemmed from the moment Black reaches out towards Ms Edwardes and her drink is spilled. Moments later, she chases after him and strikes him on the back of the head.
Ms Edwardes, who has thousands of followers online and has presented on BBC3, accepted a caution for her actions, and admitted in an online post that she had “chosen violence”.
Black, 49, who won his Oscar in 2008 for film Milk, denied wrongdoing, and insisted he had been reaching for Ms Edwardes’ drink, not her wrist, as he believed she was drunk and out of control.
Daley, a gold medallist at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, sat patiently outside court for more than six hours while waiting to give evidence. But District Judge Louisa Cieciora stopped the trial after the prosecution case, delivering an excoriating judgment about Ms Edwardes’ credibility.
“I accept Ms Edwardes provided an account in which she confirmed Mr Black grabbed her wrist”, she said.
“However the inconsistencies and weaknesses in her evidence go beyond simple matters of credibility and reliability to be determined at the end of the evidence. They are fundamental to the case.
“For that reason, I consider the prosecution evidence taken at its highest is such that…I couldn’t properly convict Mr Black of the charge.”
The judge found Ms Edwardes had given a series of different accounts of the incident, to police, in court, and on social media where she had also cracked jokes about the upcoming trial.
She said the influencer had lied to police about seeing a leaked copy of the CCTV, and she gave an “odd” answer when claiming not to remember her wrist being grabbed, shortly before she insisted it had happened.
The judge was also critical of Ms Edwardes’ explanations for lies told online, including that social media “isn’t real life”, she faced character limits, and her posts had been written in anger.
The Crown Prosecution Service pursued the case against Black all the way to a trial, calling three police officer witnesses alongside Ms Edwardes in a hearing that lasted a full day.
During the case, it was revealed that the original police file on Black had been lost, bodycam footage of the first account Ms Edwardes gave to police had been deleted, and the officer did not have notes of what was said.
In a statement after his acquittal, Black said: “I am pleased that the judge saw the truth today and ruled in my favour. As the evidence has proven, and I have always maintained, I am completely innocent, and in fact was the victim in this case of a serious assault. I am relieved this unfortunate matter is now over.”
He and Daley had been on a date night in central London when they came across Ms Edwardes, who was out with then-girlfriend, Love Island star Amber Gill.
When Daley was being bothered at the bar, Ms Gill invited the couple to their booth. But relations soured when Ms Edwardes asked a man to leave the area.
Black said he believed she had wanted the man ejected for not being famous, and a heated row then broke out.
Turning to the footage of the confrontation, Black’s lawyer Helena Duong said: “What the defence would say you can see on the CCTV is, immediately from the very beginning, Mr Black is trying to walk away.
“She turns to him and appears to reach out.
“There’s an exchange between them, in which she continues to be aggressive and shouting at him and he reacts to that.
“She makes a movement, gesticulating with her arms, which causes Mr Black to reach for the glass.”
Black said the drink was spilled when he tried to take it away from Ms Edwardes and she resisted. He maintained he had not touched her wrist.
In some of her online content, Ms Edwardes characterised the punch she threw as a “tap” and she referred to “pesky CCTV” of the incident.
Black was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome as a result of the punch and says he lost £600,000 in earnings while he was recovering.
He was found not guilty of one charge of common assault.
