The BBC acquired extra complaints concerning the BAFTA Film Awards N-word debacle than for another broadcast for the reason that Glastonbury disaster, wherein Bob Vylan chanted “death to the IDF.”
The British broadcaster clocked up 1,588 complaints from viewers who stated they had been “unhappy a racial slur was heard and that it was not edited out of the broadcast,” based on the BBC’s complaints log.
No different BBC present or broadcast has registered this variety of complaints since June 2025, when the company acquired 3,396 messages from viewers who had been upset when Bob Vylan’s anti-Israel chant was live-streamed on iPlayer.
The complaints determine is considerably ironic, provided that the BBC and producers held planning conferences earlier than the BAFTA Film Awards, wherein they mentioned not repeating the Glastonbury catastrophe. The contingency conferences were first revealed by Deadline.
The BBC has apologized for broadcasting John Davidson’s involuntary N-word interruption when Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo had been on stage. The incident stemmed from miscommunication on the night time, as Deadline revealed last week in an account of occasions that was later confirmed by BBC boss Tim Davie.
The BBC and producer Penny Lane TV didn’t hear the racial slur from their place within the exterior broadcast truck, however later caught and minimize a second incident, wherein Davidson once more stated the N-word when Sinners star Wunmi Mosaku collected her Supporting Actress prize.
On a WhatsApp group chat, a BAFTA consultant raised the alarm about an N-word being audible, however sources stated that this was solely after Mosaku had left the stage. The BBC and producer Penny Lane TV acquired BAFTA’s message, however assumed it referred to the Mosaku incident, quite than the slur directed at Jordan and Lindo, which means they thought the N-word had already been minimize.
It was solely after the awards had been broadcast on BBC One that each one events realized that the Jordan and Lindo incident had been missed. The error was compounded when the BBC did not take away the BAFTA ceremony from iPlayer till almost 15 hours after the printed. It stays offline.
“We are now looking in more detail why the team did not ascertain sooner that there had been two instances of the use of the racial slur, and why post broadcast further action was not taken to edit or remove the programme from iPlayer sooner,” Davie stated in a letter to UK Parliament’s Culture, Media & Sport Committee.
Sinners studio Warner Bros. expressed grave issues concerning the incident, remonstrating with BBC executives during a tense meeting. Warner Bros. executives are stated to have pressed the BBC for solutions about why the racial slur made the ultimate minimize, regardless of the BAFTAs being recorded two hours earlier than broadcasting on tv.
