Sinners star Wunmi Mosaku says Baftas win was ‘tainted’ by N-word incident

Actor has ‘no hard feeling’ towards Tourette activist John Davidson, but says BBC’s failure to edit out slurs kept her awake at night and brought tears to her eyes

Sinners star Wunmi Mosaku, winner of the best supporting actress Bafta, said that the N-word incident at the Baftas “tainted” her celebration and “kept [her] awake at night”.

Mosaku was speaking in Los Angeles on Sunday at the Actor awards (formerly the Screen Actors Guild awards), where Sinners won best cast, and said: “It was incredibly painful to have that celebration kind of really tainted for me.”

Tourette syndrome activist John Davidson shouted a number of slurs at the Baftas on 22 February, including the N-word while Sinners stars Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo were on stage presenting an award; the latter was audible on the BBC’s broadcast of the event, before the show was removed from the BBC’s iPlayer platform a day later.

Mosaku said: “I have no hard feeling toward John Davidson at all – he has a condition. I feel like Bafta has a lot of lessons to learn, but … it felt exploitative and performative to have someone there without the full protection of everyone, including him, and anyone in that audience.”

She added: “Then the BBC is a whole other thing … That’s the bit that really kind of kept me awake at night and brought tears to my eyes. I was like, you really chose to keep that in. I can’t understand it. I can’t understand it and I’m not sure I can forgive it.”

The BBC apologised twice, with its chief content officer Kate Phillips telling staff she was “so sorry that a racial slur was not edited out of our broadcast” and that she understood “how distressing this was”, and announced a fast-track investigation into what went wrong.

Sources at the BBC told the Guardian that its producers “didn’t hear” the slur, while Sinners studio Warner Bros said they had immediately notified Bafta of the issue. According to Deadline, Bafta said it also reported the incident to the BBC, and also asked for the broadcast to be removed from the BBC’s iPlayer.

Davidson, who had been at the Baftas ceremony because I Swear, the film based on his life, was up for a number of awards, said after the ceremony that he was “distraught” and that Bafta had told him “that any swearing would be edited out of the broadcast”.