The 2026 BAFTA Awards were supposed to celebrate cinema. Instead, they became a case study in how institutions protect some people’s dignity while treating Black pain as an afterthought.
Here is what happened. On Sunday, February 22, actors Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo took the stage at London’s Royal Festival Hall to present the first award of the night. As Jordan read from the teleprompter, a man in the audience shouted the N-word with the hard “-er.” The word “b–ch” followed immediately after.
The man was John Davidson, a 54-year-old Scottish Tourette’s syndrome campaigner who holds an MBE. He was in the room as the inspiration behind the BAFTA-nominated film I Swear, which dramatizes his life with the condition. BAFTA had warned the audience about potential involuntary outbursts before taping began. Davidson left the auditorium on his own shortly after, according to the LA Times.
The Double Standard No One Can Ignore
The ceremony was tape-delayed by two hours before airing on BBC One. That means producers had a window to edit. They used it. Filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr.’s “Free Palestine” comment was cut. Paul Thomas Anderson saying “piss” was cut. The N-word directed at two Black men? That made it to broadcast and stayed on BBC iPlayer for over 12 hours, ABC News confirmed. The BBC later admitted internally that a second racial slur from Davidson was successfully edited out, meaning the first one aired “in error.”
That is not a mistake. That is a priority list, and Black dignity was not on it.
Jamie Foxx Said What Everyone Was Thinking
Jamie Foxx did not mince words. Commenting on The Shade Room’s Instagram, Foxx wrote: “F–k that. He knew what the f–k he was doing. Why didn’t he yell it out when somebody else was on stage?” On The Neighborhood Talk, he added: “Out of all the words, you could’ve said, Tourette’s makes you say that?”
Charlamagne tha God echoed the skepticism on The Breakfast Club: “It’s just convenient he saved his most offensive outburst for Black people.” Oscar-winning production designer Hannah Beachler, who worked on Sinners with Jordan, revealed the slur was directed at her personally on the way to dinner after the show. “It happened three times that night,” she told Feminegra.
BAFTA’s Response Made It Worse
Host Alan Cumming addressed the incident over an hour later with a carefully worded script: “We apologize if you were offended.” The apology went to the audience, not to Jordan and Lindo specifically. Delroy Lindo told Vanity Fair at the afterparty that he wished “someone from BAFTA spoke to us afterwards.” No one did. By Monday, BAFTA judge Jonte Richardson resigned from the organization’s emerging talent panel, calling the handling “utterly unforgivable,” Parade reported.
Why This Matters
Tourette’s syndrome is real. Coprolalia (involuntary use of offensive language) affects 10-15% of people with the condition, according to the Tourette Association of America. That deserves compassion. But compassion for one group cannot come at the expense of another group’s safety and dignity. BAFTA had the tools, the warning, and the two-hour editing window to protect everyone in that room. They chose not to. And when the BBC decided “Free Palestine” was too offensive to air but a racial slur was not, they told the world exactly where Black people rank on their list of concerns.
The takeaway: Disability and race are not competing causes. Institutions that treat them as a zero-sum game are the ones that fail both communities. BAFTA owes more than a written statement. They owe a structural reckoning.
