The deputy chair of Bafta has defended the decision to present Noel Clarke with its outstanding British contribution to cinema award despite knowing about the dozens of allegations against him.
In an exclusive interview with Sky News after the Guardian’s expose on the Bulletproof actor, Dame Pippa Harris said she stood by her colleagues who handed Clarke the award even after they were made aware of allegations of verbal abuse, bullying and sexual harassment.
The Academy said they continued with their plan because the information given to them was anonymous or secondhand.
Following the claims of more than 20 women, Bafta wrote to its 8,000 members to stress that the alleged behaviour is contrary to the organisation’s values.
And although it revoked his award after the investigation was published, it faced serious criticism for going ahead with the ceremony.
Emmanuel Anyiam-Osigwe, who founded the British Urban Film Festival and has worked with Bafta, even gave up his membership and argued that Bafta chair Krishnendu Majumdar should be dropped from his post.
But Dame Pippa told Sky News: “This whole affair has been extremely difficult, as you can imagine, for everyone involved, and Krish has worked all the way through together with the board. It has been a joint decision-making process.
“Krish has not been doing anything on his own. So any criticism that has been levelled at Bafta should be levelled at everybody. It is really not right to single people out.”
She added that everything he did had full endorsement and knowledge of the board.
Dame Pippa also insisted that calling for the resignations of the board was not the way forward.
Instead she said if they had “one fraction” of the information the Guardian had, Clarke would never have been given the award.
“That is obvious, but we didn’t have that information. The first time that we saw the actual allegations against him was when they were published by the Guardian newspaper and as soon as we saw the allegations, we suspended the award,” she added.
