BAFTA said Friday that an independent investigation found structural weaknesses in its planning, escalation procedures and crisis coordination after an audience member shouted a racial slur during the 79th BAFTAs on Feb. 22. The outburst happened while Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were onstage presenting the award for best visual effects.
The audience member was John Davidson, a Tourette syndrome activist and the inspiration for and executive producer of the film I Swear. The slur went out on the broadcast, which was running on a two-hour tape delay, and the broadcaster later apologized for not editing it out and said it had been removed from the online version of the ceremony on iPlayer.
RISE Associates, which carried out the review for BAFTA, said the organization did not fully appreciate the nature of the risk associated with a live broadcast appearance. It said early warning signs were not escalated and that the lack of a clear operational command structure limited BAFTA’s ability to respond effectively once the incident happened. The report also said the episode showed BAFTA’s planning and risk governance systems had not kept pace with its diversity goals.
That judgment matters because the ceremony took place after BAFTA had already introduced wide-ranging reforms aimed at improving diversity, inclusion and representation. The report said those efforts did not shield the organization from criticism, and it raised a problem that reaches beyond one night on stage: how to balance accessibility for participants with the safety and dignity of everyone else in the room and at home.
RISE Associates was careful on one point. “It would be wrong to describe the event as evidence of institutional racism, as this misses an important point,” the review said. BAFTA said it was already working to address the report’s specific areas of improvement, including tightening its escalation process, taking a broader intersectional approach to event planning and dealing with existing cultural gaps.
The core question now is not whether BAFTA understands the damage from that night. It does. The question is whether the fixes it says it is making will be enough to stop a live event from failing in exactly the way the report says this one did.
