The BAFTAs, and the Sloppy Pieties of Liberal Entertainment
The comedian Conan O’Brien will host the Academy Awards in two weeks. How will his writing team metabolize the stupefying scene at this year’s BAFTAs into his routine? It seems obvious that they will have to mete out some clever response to the episode being called, in a succession of words worthy of Richard Pryor, the “Tourette’s N-Word Incident.”
This is what happened, if you somehow missed it. The actors Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, of “Sinners,” had come up to the lectern at the ceremony in London to present the award for Best Visual Effects. Some actors loosen in this setting, embracing the role of “presenter” the way they would a character, whereas others stand ramrod and deliver the script on the teleprompter clean, as if in a trance of professionalism. This is a funny aspect of awards ceremonies, seeing shyness, discomfort, or the individual personality of well-known performers cut through, and being made aware, so bluntly, that our beloved screen stars are employees with jobs. Jordan and Lindo were giving it straight when an outburst of the word “nigger” interrupted their speech—a disruption that was audible to everyone in the room, and to those watching at home, on the BBC. Whatever Jordan and Lindo may have been thinking, however they wanted to react, was suppressed by their internal reserves of restraint—the kind of restraint cultivated by figures who know that they are always being watched. Shock registered in their expressions, but they kept on.
In attendance at the ceremony was John Davidson, a Scottish activist well known across the United Kingdom for his efforts to destigmatize Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological disorder that can manifest in involuntary verbal tics. He is also the subject of the 2025 feature film “I Swear,” a feel-good comedy about the trials of his life, which was nominated for several BAFTAs. (It won for Casting and Leading Actor, with Robert Aramayo—who portrayed Davidson—beating out Jordan, Timothée Chalamet, and others.) Davidson has coprolalia—uncontrollable obscene speech—hence the pun in the title of the film. At the start of the program, a stage manager had told the audience that there might be some outbursts; following the moment with Jordan and Lindo, the host of this year’s ceremony, the Scottish actor and director Alan Cumming, made note of the “strong language” the audience had just heard, and thanked the crowd for keeping a “respectful space for everyone,” later reiterating that “the tics you’ve heard tonight are involuntary.” In stressful situations, such as attending a high-stakes awards show, for example, tics can intensify; Davidson made other outbursts throughout the ceremony, and eventually decided to remove himself to a private screening room.
The extraordinary failure, in my opinion and in that of many others, of the responsible agent—the BBC—is now utterly apparent. Davidson had been seated near a microphone, amplifying any outbursts he would have made. The ceremony, secondly, runs on a tape delay, airing two hours after the live event, meaning that the broadcaster failed to edit out the slur for the final cut. The ceremony runs on that tape delay ostensibly so that the production team can shave time off the proceedings and fit the broadcast into a preordained two-hour slot, but in so editing, the team molds the awards show, an event that is somehow both increasingly volatile and increasingly arcane, into a polite package for viewers. What trips the censor, and what does not? Akinola Davies, Jr., who won the Outstanding Début award for his speculative semi-autobiographical drama, “My Father’s Shadow,” ended his speech with “Free Palestine”; the production team made sure to cut it for broadcast.
The ricochet of information in the next few days made the extent of the fuckup almost comically exhausting. It was an ugly week on the internet, a fruitful car crash for explanatory cultural punditry. The word cloud of implicated themes was a mushroom: disability; racism; intersectionality; British humor; American violence; “le wokisme,” for the French. Interviewed at a party after the ceremony, Lindo said that he wished “someone from BAFTA spoke to us afterward,” indicating that no one on the awards-ceremony team thought it prudent to address him or Jordan. Davidson quickly became a subject of scrutiny and rage. The first statement he issued, in which he wrote that he was “deeply mortified if anyone considers my involuntary tics to be intentional or to carry any meaning,” was found wanting by some members of the public, who thought it dismissed, or demoted, the offense done to Jordan and Lindo at the expense of explaining the terror Davidson lives through every day. In a subsequent public gesture, an e-mail interview with Variety, Davidson said that he would “appreciate reports of the event explaining that I ticked perhaps 10 different offensive words on the night of the awards,” and that “most articles are giving the impression I shouted one single slur on Sunday.” Davidson added that the BBC, which has made, over the past four decades, several documentaries about him, had promised that it would edit out his swearing—some of which, like when Davidson shouted “pedophile” during one of Cumming’s bits about “Paddington,” it evidently did. Other people living with Tourette’s took up this mantle of public education, including Jumaane Williams, the public advocate for New York City, seeking to explain the neurological basis of coprolalia and to dispel the spectre of inevitable intent when it comes to “nigger,” that exemplar of violently loaded speech. Others didn’t want to hear explanation, suspicious of a larger culture that considers anti-Blackness the usual weather, on some psychic level, basically tolerable.
The BBC issued something like an apology to Lindo, Jordan, and Davidson, but not without praising the “dignity and professionalism” of the Black actors, which, from one angle, reads as condescending placation. The BBC claims that the producers didn’t hear the word “nigger” on the broadcast. The audibly stunned audience, and reports that Warner Bros., the studio behind “Sinners,” reached out to the BBC to request the cut before the broadcast aired, make it harder to believe that the slur could have gone unnoticed.
I am completely weary of apology theatre. This was an aberrance by definition and by form; our collective sanity depends on retaining the ability to parse out instances of this kind of ambient shock and pain. This was a situation that need not become a referendum on Davidson, on divining some inner hatred in the man; what we can consider is the sloppy pieties of liberal entertainment. What could have been controlled was the edit. Intentional or not, the episode and the ensuing controversy take on the tinge of rage bait, of bears profitably poked. The BBC spent energy and resources politically castrating its program that would have been better spent protecting its vulnerable guests. It is not fair to expect Lindo nor Jordan to act graciously here. Nor is it fair to expect Davidson to continuously flay himself for the public’s satisfaction. ♦