{"id":2294643,"date":"2026-02-23T01:50:03","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T01:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2294643"},"modified":"2026-02-23T01:50:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T01:50:03","slug":"baftas-2026-racist-slur-at-british-awards-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/baftas-2026-racist-slur-at-british-awards-show\/","title":{"rendered":"BAFTAs 2026: Racist slur at British awards show"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n It was the clip heard around the world after Sunday night\u2019s BAFTA ceremony in London \u2014 a man yelling a racist slur as two celebrated Black actors, Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, presented an award on stage.\n <\/p>\n

\n The man was John Davidson, the subject of the British indie film \u201cI Swear,\u201d about a man with Tourette Syndrome. Davidson, who has long campaigned for awareness of the condition, told celebrity.land before the ceremony that he was worried about the involuntary tics that mark it.\n <\/p>\n

\n Describing how Robert Aramayo, who went on to win best actor<\/a> and rising star, researched his role, Davidson said the young English actor studied him closely, asking questions like, \u201cWhen you have a tic do you know where it comes from? What about tic triggers?\u201d Speaking on the crowded red carpet, Davidson went on: \u201cCertain things \u2014 like today, lots of people around, I\u2019m feeling very, you know, more tics in case I lash out. Different situations can trigger different emotions and tics and stuff.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

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\n The audience had been warned before the ceremony that tics or involuntary swearing could occur, and Davidson received large applause inside the hall. After the incident, host Alan Cumming asked for \u201cunderstanding\u201d for the \u201cstrong and offensive language.\u201d He reminded the crowd that Tourette Syndrome was a disability and tics were involuntary, and said: \u201cWe apologize if you are offended tonight.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Contacted by celebrity.land, the BBC, which airs the ceremony with a long delay, reiterated that message. It did not respond to questions about why the moment was not cut from the ceremony when it aired on television.\n <\/p>\n

\n Lindo, in particular, looked stunned at the outburst, and then moved on with the ceremony, where he and Jordan presented the first award of the evening \u2014 for special visual effects to \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI Swear\u201d has grossed $8 million at the UK box office<\/a> to date and will be out in US cinemas in April.\n <\/p>\n

\n Accepting his best actor win, Aramayo said, \u201cI can\u2019t believe I\u2019m up here looking at people like you,\u201d gesturing at Leonardo DiCaprio, who had been nominated for his role in One Battle After Another. Aramayo went on to tell an emotional Ethan Hawke, another nominee, how a talk the seasoned actor had given at Julliard had changed his own outlook as a student actor.\n <\/p>\n

\n British cinema\u2019s biggest night cleaved to some longstanding award season narratives while heading off-piste on others.\n <\/p>\n

\n It awarded best supporting actress to \u201cSinners\u2019\u201d Wunmi Mosaku (incidentally, one of few Brit actors nominated) over One Battle\u2019s Teyana Taylor. Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd and Benicio del Toro, both winners of significant awards this season, lost out to Sean Penn for best supporting actor.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cHamnet\u201d was awarded outstanding British film, but the homegrown title, which took best motion picture drama at the Golden Globes last month, walked away with relatively little, its only other award Jessie Buckley\u2019s best actress win (this season\u2019s biggest lock).\n <\/p>\n

\n The biggest movie to walk away empty handed was \u201cMarty Supreme.\u201d Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet leaves London with an unread speech and another chance to confirm his greatness at next month\u2019s Oscars. With Aramayo out of the picture, there\u2019s nothing to suggest he won\u2019t.\n <\/p>\n

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\n \"One<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n Though BAFTA shared the love, handing three awards to \u201cSinners\u201d and three to \u201cFrankenstein,\u201d it couldn\u2019t deny the greatness of \u201cOne Battle After Another.\u201d The film\u2019s six wins, spanning best picture, best director, adapted screenplay, cinematography, editing and supporting actor is enough to entertain the possibility of a sweep at the Oscars.\n <\/p>\n

\n The BAFTAs and Oscars rarely agree about the year\u2019s best film, and should Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s prevail it would be only the third film in a decade and change where the awards aligned (\u201cNomadland\u201d and \u201cOppenheimer\u201d are the others, for those keeping track).\n <\/p>\n

\n celebrity.land\u2019s Sandra Gonzalez contributed to this report.<\/em>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source edition.celebrity.land.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was the clip heard around the world after Sunday night\u2019s BAFTA ceremony in London \u2014 a man yelling a racist slur as two celebrated Black actors, Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, presented an award on stage. The man was John Davidson, the subject of the British indie film \u201cI Swear,\u201d about a man […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2294644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2294643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/BAFTAs-2026-Racist-slur-at-British-awards-show.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2294643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2294645,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294643\/revisions\/2294645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2294644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2294643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2294643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2294643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}