The BBC received more complaints about the BAFTA Film Awards N-word debacle than for any other broadcast since the Glastonbury crisis, in which Bob Vylan chanted “death to the IDF.”
The British broadcaster clocked up 1,588 complaints from viewers who said they were “unhappy a racial slur was heard and that it was not edited out of the broadcast,” according to the BBC’s complaints log.
No other BBC show or broadcast has registered this number of complaints since June 2025, when the corporation received 3,396 messages from viewers who were upset when Bob Vylan’s anti-Israel chant was live-streamed on iPlayer.
The complaints figure is somewhat ironic, given that the BBC and producers held planning meetings before the BAFTA Film Awards, in which they discussed not repeating the Glastonbury disaster. The contingency meetings 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 were on stage. The incident stemmed from miscommunication on the night, as Deadline revealed last week in an account of events that was later confirmed by BBC boss Tim Davie.
The BBC and producer Penny Lane TV did not hear the racial slur from their position in the outside broadcast truck, but later caught and cut a second incident, in which Davidson again said the N-word when Sinners star Wunmi Mosaku collected her Supporting Actress prize.
On a WhatsApp group chat, a BAFTA representative raised the alarm about an N-word being audible, but sources said that this was only after Mosaku had left the stage. The BBC and producer Penny Lane TV received BAFTA’s message, but assumed it referred to the Mosaku incident, rather than the slur directed at Jordan and Lindo, meaning they thought the N-word had already been cut.
It was only after the awards were broadcast on BBC One that all parties realized that the Jordan and Lindo incident had been missed. The error was compounded when the BBC failed to remove the BAFTA ceremony from iPlayer until nearly 15 hours after the broadcast. It remains 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 said in a letter to UK Parliament’s Culture, Media & Sport Committee.
Sinners studio Warner Bros. expressed grave concerns about the incident, remonstrating with BBC executives during a tense meeting. Warner Bros. executives are said to have pressed the BBC for answers about why the racial slur made the final cut, despite the BAFTAs being recorded two hours before broadcasting on television.
