The 2026 BAFTA Awards, which were meant to be a night of celebration, were marred when John Davidson’s Tourette caused him to lose control of his speech.
On Sunday evening, February 22, BAFTA hosted its 79th annual awards ceremony at London’s Royal Festival Hall, marking a star-studded night to celebrate the industry’s best talents.
However, the celebrations took a wrong turn when Tourette’s activist John Davidson, who is the subject of biopic I Swear, lost his control of his speech and shouted racial slurs on stage, sparking a chaos during the event.
Briefly pausing the ceremony twice, host Alan Cumming issued apology to the audience, saying that he was sorry if “anyone was offended” by the “strong language” that they “may have noticed.”
After the award event, one of the victims of John Davidson’s racial slur took to X to break silence on the controversial incident.
Taking to her official social media account, awards-winning movie Sinners production designer Hannah Beachler addressed the incident, expressing that she was unhappy with Alan Cumming’s vague apology.
She said an “impossible situation” was made worse by the “throw-away apology.”
“I keep trying to write about what happened at the BAFTAs, and I can’t find the words. The situation is almost impossible, but it happened 3 times that night, and one of the three times was directed at myself on the way to dinner after the show,” she expressed.
Beachler continued, “And a third time at a Black woman. I understand and deeply know why this is an impossible situation. I know we must handle this with grace and continue to push through. But what made the situation worse was the throw-away apology of ‘if you were offended’ at the end of the show.”
“Of course we were offended…but our frequency, our spiritual vibration is tuned to a higher level than what happened. I am not steal, this did not bounce off of me, but I exist above it. It can’t take away from who I am as an artist,” the designer concluded.
The shocking incident instantly dimmed the entire ceremony as both media and social media started debating on it.
