And he ended it by punting around for work. Classic Ridley. That’s it. What a night it’s been for dresses, commas, films that people claim to dislike more than they actually do and horrific dancing fish-men.
All done now. Thanks for sticking around long after you needed to. Oscars next! Bye!
Oh no, Ridley’s being Ridley again. He just mentioned his late brother, then impatiently rolled his eyes when the crowd started applauding. Never change, Ridley Scott.
Ridley Scott is moved by the award. This in itself must mean a lot, since he’s often unsentimental to the point of coldness. He reads a speech that doubles as autobiography. He also sounds so much like Michael Parkinson these days that I half expect to see him offering pensioners free pens in exchange for life insurance on a UKTV channel before long.
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Also, quickly, here’s that brilliant Ridley Scott interview from earlier this year.
Now a highlight reel of Ridley Scott’s career. Blade Runner, Gladiator, Hannibal (weirdly), Alien, Legend, The Martian, Thelma and Louise, American Gangster, that terrible Orlando Bloom one (weirdly), The Counselor (weirdly). Good for Bafta for including the misses as well as the hits, though.
William hands off to Kenneth Branagh, who shows much less interest in underrated stationery items. Maybe next year, Kenneth.
Oh, it’s because her husband is presenting next. Never mind. Prince William is here to introduce the Bafta Fellowship to Ridley Scott and, endearingly, he’s reading from a speech that has a little treasury tag through it.
Three Billboards wins best film
And the winner is THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI. God bless Frances McDormand, who sternly hauls the producers to the stage so they don’t waste any time. The speeches get a slow clap from the Duchess of Cambridge, though, which is weird.
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Daniel Craig is here to present BEST FILM. The introduction is tiny, but he still manages to cram in more words than he did in the entire running time of Quantum of Solace.
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Del Toro spends his acceptance speech paying tribute to all the British people who have ever inspired him, which is enormously endearing.
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Guillermo del Toro wins best director
BEST DIRECTOR now. GUILLERMO DEL TORO wins for The Shape of Water. Not to return to the scaly well too often, but if he thanks that dancing fish-man in his speech, there will be hell to pay.
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Frances McDormand wins best actress
FRANCES McDORMAND wins for that film you’re steadily convincing yourself that you hate even though it really doesn’t warrant that much thought. She praises activists for hijacking the three billboards conceit, then tells a long story about herself. Normally, this would be infuriating except a) Frances McDormand is great and b) rather this than the poxy fish-man again.
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Next is BEST ACTRESS, introduced as briefly as possible by Chiwetel Ejiofor. By my count, we have two awards left and 35 minutes of time to fill. Unless I’m wrong, we’re in for at least 15 minutes of space-filling dancing fish-men. LUCKY US.
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Personally I’m a huge fan of Gary Oldman repeatedly smacking his heavy ring against the podium, by the way.
Gary Oldman wins best actor
And the winner is GARY OLDMAN, for putting a pillow up his jumper and saying “NEVER” in a Bane voice quite a lot. Your dad is thrilled about this win, by the way.
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BEST ACTOR now, a category roughly split into people your peers like, people the critics like and people who your dad stood up and applauded as soon as the film ended.
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The Bafta goes to THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING MISSOURI. Martin McDonagh actually gets to talk this time, and gigglingly alludes to the whereabouts of Woody Harrelson. However, his win does mean that people have to pretend even harder to hate a film that isn’t especially good or bad, so that takes the shine off a bit.
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ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY now. And by god does Rachel Weisz commit to the terrible joke she’s been ordered to tell in her introduction. She is unstoppable. She’s got “future Bafta host” written all over her.
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DUNKIRK wins, presumably for creating the closest sonic equivalent to a panic attack I’ve ever heard. One of the winners uses the speech to announce his retirement and, in the audience, Ridley Scott raises his eyebrows so high that they almost pop clean off his head.
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Oh, maybe they caught them all this year. Anyway, SOUND now.
Now for the In Memoriam segment. This is accompanied by a stirring string movement by the Kanneh-Masons, which is a relief because for a second there I was worried that the bloody dancing fish-man would come on and play Yakety Sax out of his bum or something.
As is traditional with these montages, one name will be accidentally omitted. Twitter will tell us who this is in five.. four... three... two...
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Allison Janney wins best supporting actress
ALLISON JANNEY wins for I, Tonya. Lots of films with commas in the titles this year, aren’t there? I wrote a book with a comma in the title recently. It has not won a Bafta tonight and now I’m feeling aggressively persecuted.
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Next up is SUPPORTING ACTRESS, introduced by Bryan Cranston doing a British accent that I genuinely think just made my colon turn to ash inside my body.
Oh! Lumley’s realised that Nyoni and Morgan left their envelope on the podium, and asks for someone to remove it to stop another Oscars-style mix-up. But OH WAIT, it’s just an excuse for the dancing fish-man to tumble around on stage for an interminable length of time. I hate you, dancing fish-man.
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Rungano Nyoni and Emily Morgan win for I AM NOT A WITCH. The win seems like it’s taken them both by surprise, not least because Nyoni thanks her niece long before she thanks anyone who actually helped make the film.
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The award for OUTSTANDING DEBUT BY A BRITISH WRITER, DIRECTOR OR PRODUCER now. This is all moving along very briskly, isn’t it? Either the BBC has done an amazing job of editing out all the flab, or this was just one of the least interesting awards shows in recent history.
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Incidentally, let me interrupt this acceptance speech for a film about a man fornicating with a hologram to point you towards more information about the Sisters Uncut protest.
Oh, the Blade Runner guy is choking back tears and I feel bad for being mean now.
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BLADE RUNNER 2049 wins, and that sounds about right. It is, without question, the prettiest film I’ve ever forced myself to stay awake until the end of.
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SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS now. The nominees are Star Wars, Sexy Fish, Dunkirk, Blade Runner and Angry Monkeys.
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Paul Austerberry accepts his award and makes a very polite speech in which he only very slightly gets the film’s studio wrong.
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THE SHAPE OF WATER wins, because it had good production design and not because the dancing fish segment would have looked weird and out of place unless it won something.
PRODUCTION DESIGN now. It’s worth pointing out that other awards were handed out tonight, but they weren’t televised because of that bizarrely long dancing fish opening. Great work, gang.
Sam Rockwell wins best supporting actor
SAM ROCKWELL wins for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is going to run away with this, isn’t it? I’d make a Crash comparison here, but everyone else is already make it so I’ll wait.
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Lupita Nyong’o is here to present BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR; a category that includes Hugh Grant, who should win, and Christopher Plummer, who should at least win an award for most durable punchline.
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CALL ME BY YOUR NAME wins. James Ivory takes the stage, walking cane in hand, and seems legitimately blown away. His sincerity has caused Helena Bonham Carter to either cry or experience a painful bout of trapped wind. It’s hard to tell.
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BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY now, and I missed what Orlando Bloom said presenting it because honestly, who has time?
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The winner is DANIEL KALUUYA, which should surprise nobody. Not only was he the star of one of the year’s most successful and critically acclaimed films, but he was also terrific as Parking Pataweyo in the sketch show Ruddy Hell It’s Harry and Paul.
Daniel is overrunning, and I have a horrible feeling that the bank of expressionless Bafta trophies get redder and redder as the speech goes on. If that’s the case, it’s terrifying.
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Next is the EE RISING STAR AWARD. This one was voted for by the public, and whoever wins will have to stand before a weird expressionless bank of Bafta trophies that make up this year’s stage. I strongly dislike the set this year. It’s like being judged by all your dead ancestors at once.
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Martin McDonagh, Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin take the stage, and McDonagh immediately points out that he isn’t completely British. Also, for those keeping count, we’ve had our first Time’s Up acceptance speech mention.
And the winner is THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI, and not Paddington 2 for some reason.
The award for outstanding British film
And here’s the first award: OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM. Jennifer Lawrence presents, but doesn’t fall over at any point. It’s like she doesn’t even know what she’s for any more.
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I’ve warmed to Joanna Lumley. Her material is terrible, but she’s giving it her all. Plus she knows how to be brief. She should host everything, quite honestly.
Some light crowd work from Lumley now. Lumley points out an actor, then gives them each three compliments and a wisecrack. Except for Frances McDormand, who just gets a load of compliments and then a weird pause. Which is better, probably.
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And then it’s revealed that Joanna Lumley was hauling both of them about all along. So far, Lumley’s shtick has been absolute nonstop hokeyness, but at least it’s shtick. After years of Stephen Fry hurling syllables at us, it’s actually quite refreshing.
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In short this performance is:
Man dressed as a fish
Woman dressed as a woman
Bit of twirling around on a rope
Light, uneasy applause from the assembled stars.
And that’s about it. Oh, and it’s much much longer than it needs to be. I should have mentioned that upfront.
Actually, scrap that because here comes Cirque du Soleil to do an interpretive dance about The Shape of Water. Rather bold of Bafta to kick things off with what’s basically a Eurovision half-time show, but that’s what makes Bafta Bafta.
And now a quick red carpet montage of people listing films at Dermot O’Leary. It’ll start properly soon, promise.
The ceremony begins
And here we go. The show begins with a film of Joanna Lumley ringing up all her friends to tell them that she’s presenting the Baftas this year. But – get this – her friends are all people from this year’s nominated films. It’s basically:
LUMLEY: Hello Winston Churchill, I’m hosting the Baftas.
WINSTON CHURCHILL FROM DARKEST HOUR: I am Winston Churchill from Darkest Hour.
Lumley: Ooh err.
But five minutes long.
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We’re at the bit of Call the Midwife where everyone cries happy tears, so consider this your final warning. Go to the toilet now, or risk missing LUMLEYGEDDON.
Before the show starts on BBC One, allowing me to put this pointless sham to bed once and for all, here’s a gallery of what people wore tonight. HINT: barely any dungarees.
You may have noticed that the stars primarily wore black on the red carpet this evening. Jess Cartner-Morley has just written a piece about it, and what it means for the Time’s Up movement.
You know who I feel sorry for? The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. They’re not up for any awards tonight, but they still have to show up and pretend that they’ve got an opinion on Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. One day there will an episode of The Crown about this.
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Unrelated: will anyone else be furious if Paddington 2 ends up being shut out of the awards, or just me?
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I just snuck another look at the Bafta Twitter mentions. Nobody is mentioning any of the winners. Nobody. You should definitely not go and look. Take my word for it, because I am a respected and trustworthy journalist. All the winners will be announced in 40 minutes when the show starts, and not a moment before. Please don’t go and look at Twitter. I need this.
Oh, remember in the intro how I said I was going to spend this gap watching the red carpet show on Facebook? That didn’t happen. I watched a bit of it, and it was Dermot O’Leary apologising profusely to Leslie Bibb, and I tried to figure out what he’d done wrong. But I couldn’t, so I gave up. One more hot hour of updates like these, folks, and then I get to actually do something.
Sisters Uncut's red carpet protest
Feminist group Sisters Uncut have just put out a press release about their red carpet protest tonight, which they did to strike out at Theresa May’s domestic violence policies. No arrests were made, but at least someone got video of the moment.
So...this happened today at the #EEBAFTAs ! Looks like it’s a protest against Theresa May! It happened so quick!! pic.twitter.com/yQVwtUtBPT
— 이스라엘 ⚡️ (@israelsoares003) February 18, 2018
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Truth be told, I’m a little worried about tonight’s host Joanna Lumley. As Stephen Fry demonstrated a couple of years ago, one of the key benefits of hosting the Baftas is that you get to flounce off Twitter in a gigantic strop whenever any of your comments are misconstrued by the public. But Joanna hasn’t been on Twitter since April 2016, which leaves her potentially flounceless. Someone had better set her up with a Snapchat sharpish, or else it’ll be one hell of a missed opportunity.
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We probably shouldn’t forget the big non-award news of the day either; the letter cosigned by dozens of British actresses addressing the Time’s Up movement. This is likely to be a big theme of the ceremony, so take a minute to read the letter here.
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Not that I’m casting around for something to do or anything, but I just took a look at some of the replies sent to the official Bafta Twitter account. They’re currently a mix of:
RED CARPET PHOTOS!
COMPLAINING THAT THE CEREMONY ISN’T BEING BROADCAST LIVE!
CONGRATULATING THE WINNERS (although to reiterate, no winners have been announced yet because I’m not liveblogging the ceremony for another hour and a half and I want you to stick around for that)!
COMPLAINING THAT PEOPLE REFER TO CELEBRITIES AS ‘STARS’ EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE NOT LITERAL COLOSSAL BALLS OF PERMANENTLY EXPLODING GAS!
Why are they called “stars” when scientifically & logically they are not?
— LEON (@ValerioDiodorus) February 18, 2018
See?
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No winners have been announced yet – and, for the purposes of this ridiculous time-delay construct, nor will they be – but hero of the night might already be Lesley Manville. Nominated for best supporting actress, Leslie just about made the red carpet after doing a play. Her matinee performance of Long Day’s Journey Into Night ended just in the nick of time to get her there. “We did the quickest show in history,” she told Dermot O’Leary on the red carpet. “I told everyone, ‘Get them eating their ice-creams, and get them back in their seats!’”
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Alternatively, this week’s Comedy Bang Bang had Winston Churchill as a guest, lobbying hard against Dunkirk as best picture winner. I listened earlier and it is quite something. He’s on at the 38:33 mark.
Actors and activists assemble: Letitia Wright, Hayley Squires, Ruth Wilson, Tessa Thompson, Marai Larasi, Laura Bates, Gemma Chan, Gemma Arterton, Gwen Davis, Andrea Riseborough, Eileen Pullen, Greta Gerwig, Salma Hayek, Phyll Opoku-Gyimah and Barbara Broccoli take to the red carpet.
Earlier in the evening Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project which collects testimonies from women around the world concerning sexual violence, praised the Time’s Up movement, explaining that in tandem with charities and initiatives like her own, it can lead to sustainable positive change. “We’ve seen so many incredible courageous people coming forward with their own experiences and it really helps to break the silence and shame,” she said.
One deeply constructive way for us to fill time is to read Peter Bradshaw’s predictions of how tonight will go. As always with these things, ignore the “will win” and see what Peter has written for “should win”. Honestly, he is a man of quite extraordinary taste.
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Timothée Chalamet, who is up for the EE Rising Star award (voted for by the public) tonight, stars in two of the films being honoured, Lady Bird and Call Me By Your Name. “It’s a strange feeling I didn’t anticipate,” he said of being in two of the year’s top films, adding that each time he heard praise for his directors or co-stars he felt a “groundswell of pride”.
As for the accolades he is nominated for (he is also up for Best Actor at the Oscars) he said the business of acceptance speeches posed a conundrum. “It’s such a fine line, because at some of these other things we’ve been we’ve been prepared and then don’t go up there,” he laughed, “but then you don’t want to go up there and not have a speech.”
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And now, with the red carpet over, it’s time for the ceremony to begin. Except NOT FOR YOU because you’re at home watching this on television like I am. Oh, sure, you could check Twitter every couple of minutes to see who’s won what, but that’s the snowflake way out. Instead why not join me, Stuart Heritage, as I struggle to think of ways to fill this yawning two-hour gap before the television coverage starts? It’ll be fun, and by that I mean it’ll be something that exists.
Bafta president Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge arrive
Prince William is wearing a penguin suit, as per usual, but the Duchess of Cambridge had a trickier sartorial choice to make – also as per usual. Wearing black would have been against royal protocol, according to very The Crown-ish reports circulating in the run up to tonight’s event, because it would have been perceived as a political statement. Deep olive green with a black sash is a safe, vaguely on-side, alternative.
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Lesley Manville, who is up for best supporting actress for her role in Phantom Thread, arrives straight from the Wyndham’s Theatre where she is currently performing in Long Day’s Journey Into Night. “My hair was under a wig about half an hour ago,” she joked to host O’Leary. Manville’s ex-husband, Gary Oldman, is also up for an award tonight - best actor for the Winston Churchill biopic Darkest Hour.
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Actor-turned-director Andy Serkis, who stars in this year’s Black Panther, arrives with his wife, the actor Lorraine Ashbourne. Serkis told red-carpet host Dermot O’Leary that he was happy to have a night off from presenting or nomination duties. “I’m not presenting anything - I’m here to honour my friends and my industry.”
The best supporting actress nominee Allison Janney (currently having quite a fashion moment as cover star of The Gentlewoman magazine) said that this awards season is “an important time, one I never thought I’d see in my lifetime”.
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The best actress nominee Margot Robbie talked on the red carpet about producing I, Tonya, and her aim to produce more female-driven films to “keep trying to find equality in our industry”.
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Angelina Jolie arrives with Loung Ung, the Cambodian-American human-rights activist. Jolie’s film adaptation of Ung’s book, First They Killed My Father, is nominated this evening for best film not in the English language. Ung is also the official spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World programme.
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Naomie Harris, the actor who is one of the signatories of the Time’s Up letter, has arrived with Afua Hirsch on the red carpet. Hirsch, a journalist and broadcaster, says that she’s pleased that society has “reached a point of zero tolerance” when it came to abuse and harassment. “There are so many amazing stories about women who have been airbrushed from history,” she said, pointing to the life of Yaa Asantewaa, “Africa’s Joan of Arc and a household name in Ghana”, as one she would like to see celebrated.
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Salma Hayek, who has written movingly about her experiences with Harvey Weinstein, wore black in support of Time’s Up and said on the red carpet: “I’m very proud that it is my industry that has been pushing the issues of gender equality and sexual harassment to end. I hope it inspires many other industries.”
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Only a monster could fail to be moved by this red carpet tableau: Gemma Arterton – one of the signatories of the Time’s Up open letter that ran in today’s Observer – with Eileen Pullen and Gwen Davis, two women who were part of the 1968 three-week walk out from Ford’s Dagenham plant which, said Arterton, “really started the equal pay movement”.
In what may prove to be the best red carpet interview of the night Pullen and Davis made a case for the necessity of Time’s Up because, as women, “we were always treated like nobody. Why should we be?” When asked whether there were any celebrities they were excited to see that night they replied: “Not really.”
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Octavia Spencer, who is nominated in the best supporting actress category for her role in The Shape of Water, arrives on the red carpet. The actress has chosen a beautiful sequinned black gown to show her support for the all-black dress code.
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Al Gore wears his Time’s Up badge in support of the movement that will see female attendees wear all black. The politician and environmentalist will be hoping his film An Inconvenient Sequel, beats off the competition in the best documentary category later this evening.
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Edith Bowman has arrived on the red carpet. The TV presenter, who will be broadcasting from the red carpet alongside Dermot O’Leary, revealed before the event this evening that she had negotiated to be paid the same as her co-host. “This is the first time I’ve ever had a conversation about it,” she revealed. “I wanted to find out if I was getting the same as Dermot, you know we’re doing the same job. And we are on the same amount.”
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Best supporting actress nominee Kristin Scott Thomas is wearing a black skirt suit and a Time’s Up pin, in support of the #metoo movement. On the red carpet she said, of Time’s Up: “We need equality now – I think their slogan is absolutely right. I haven’t stopped talking about this since it all started. Now it’s a question of moving it from conversation to action.” She added that: “I pinch myself, looking back [over her career]. Why did I let myself do that? I get cross and angry, retrospectively.”
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BAFTA Film Awards Red Carpet 2018 https://t.co/TaF6qVKMYB
— BAFTA (@BAFTA) February 18, 2018
If you want to watch the red carpet show, Bafta are streaming it live on their social media accounts.
Andrea Riseborough and Time’s Up activist Phyll Opoku-Gyimah arrive on the red carpet. Riseborough, who has adhered to the all-black dress code in support of the Time’s Up movement, was one of the 190 signatories of a letter calling for an end to abuse and inequality. In her red carpet interview Opoku-Gyimah said: “This is an opportunity for us to amplify our voices on sexual harassment women have faced around the world in all sectors.” When asked about the validity of the Time’s Up campaign, given the privileged world that actors inhabit, Opoku-Gyimah added: “I’m not in a privileged situation but I have been been offered the opportunity to be here, and whilst I’ve got the opportunity I will stand in solidarity with every single woman who has had their lives touches by some form of discrimination.” Riseborough said that the issues Time’s Up should address, moving forward, should include the “ludicrous” use of non-disclosure agreements, in which employees pledge to keep quiet if they experience racism or abuse, in professional settings.
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It's Bafta time!
Afternoon everyone, and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the 2018 Bafta film awards. As always, this is the best awards show ever to be broadcast on enough of a delay to render all form of surprise null and void. And I’m here to liveblog it. Lucky me. Lucky us.
In a rare break from tradition, the Baftas are being held on a day when it isn’t pelting down with offensively freezing rain, which means we won’t be afforded the annual treat of watching Meryl Streep slowly lose all feeling in her extremities during a series of inane red carpet interviews. Nevertheless, Hannah Marriott and Scarlett Conlon from the Guardian’s fashion team will be here in a moment to boggle at every outfit that the stars mistakenly thought would be a good idea to wear in London in February.
After that? Well, after that it gets complicated. The ceremony starts immediately after the red carpet coverage ends, and a steady stream of results will be leaked across the internet. However, this is a liveblog of the televised Baftas ceremony, and that doesn’t start until 9pm. So we’ll kill some time by watching a Facebook livestream and then, when the show starts on BBC One, we’re all just going to pretend that we don’t know who won anything and make out like everything is a massive surprise, even though we do and it isn’t.
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