There was something very liberating about being asked to go to the Baftas as someone who isn’t, specifically, a film journalist. “Just go and have fun!”, my editor told me. So, as with anyone not a part of The Favourite or Roma, there was basically no point in my being there. But I also knew that there would be food, and Cate Blanchett, so I said yes. That’s how I found myself getting dolled up on Sunday night and rocking up at the Royal Albert Hall.
Look, here’s the thing. I didn’t mean to crash Timothée Chalamet on the red carpet. I didn’t time it that way. It just happened. The way tequila shots and snogs with your best mate do, except this had a lot more screaming. The one solid thing I can report is that Chalamet has a lot of fans, and most of them have a better range than Mariah Carey. They are also very active on social media, as I would find out later, after taking a picture of him at the post-awards dinner, tweeting it, and quickly being followed by an account called Timothée Chalamet’s Hair. I briefly lingered to watch him sign autographs and pose for selfies, before a girl holding a sign with “MARGOT ROBBIE” on it – a really perfunctory sign, like she was picking her up from the airport – yelled at me because I was not Margot Robbie.
What can I tell you about being in the room at the Baftas? What can I tell you about what isn’t on the television? Mostly that they tell you all of the things you shouldn’t say or do because of what will be on the television. For those of us just there on a jolly (me, but also everyone who wasn’t Olivia Colman in Colman’s category), that meant no filming to preserve broadcasting rights, and for the potential winners: they should not mention on stage that there was a COUNTDOWN CLOCK (that was how it was actually described) to make sure their speeches did not overrun.
I mostly napped my way through this bit – the invigilators banging on before the exam – but perked up when I spotted Brian May who, with the greatest hair in rock, was impossible not to spot, and could make a tidy return on a side-hustle leading tours or museum groups should he ever need to. Thankfully, I was sitting with the Daily Mail’s gossip columnist, Baz Bamigboye, who offered me Fruit Pastilles. “It’s good to have the sugar boost”, he told me.
It’s weird really, isn’t it? Here was a room full of the best writing talent in the country and Bafta couldn’t find anybody to write a single good joke for the host, Joanna Lumley. It’s weird too that Lumley, one of the greatest comic actors we have, butchered each line like she was a serial killer in a small German town and we’re just now, years later, finding out about it on a Channel 5 documentary at 3am. At one point, Lumley made a gag about Claire Foy maybe winning for her role in the moon-landing flick, First Man, and having to make a “giant leap” on to the stage. I was just willing someone to heckle SHAME THERE ISN’T A GARDEN BRIDGE. There was another joke Lumley did about “the dress she’d got herself into” which, apart from being objectively awful, did not work, because she was wearing … a suit.
It’s difficult, because I don’t like being mean, but I also think after this performance that the Oscars should count themselves lucky that they literally do not have a host. The room was very much in agreement on this. At this point I was quite stressed, because of the awful jokes, and also because Cate Blanchett had dyed her usually blond hair brown, which was making it hard for me to pick her out from the second tier.
But good things were happening! The Favourite and Roma were cleaning up. The wonderful Mahershala Ali won best supporting actor. My nemesis, Margot Robbie, presented an award, and then from my vantage point, I watched her get slightly lost in the crowds, then stutter in her attempts to walk back in front of people, like waiting endlessly for tourists to get their pic of Big Ben. I watched Rachel Weisz, dressed like an amazing tulle and chiffon swan, swivel in her seat and whisper to Spike Lee, dressed like a blueberry, but pulling it off because he is Spike Lee. Rami Malek won for Bohemian Rhapsody and thanked Dexter Fletcher, and not Bryan Singer. Nobody, for the entire night, mentioned Liam Neeson. Deborah Davis of The Favourite, who co-won for best original screenplay, gave her speech: “Thank you for my first ever Bafta, for my first ever screenplay.” Which is the most beautiful way of saying: “FIRST TIME, DICKHEADS.”
I guess I hadn’t really thought about how we were all going to be transported to Grosvenor House, where the awards dinner and afterparty were held. I just knew there was transport. The transport turned out to be a fleet of coaches, which seems logical, given the number of people, but also, it absolutely felt like waiting in a car park to begin the trip to play Burnley away. I thought about Cate Blanchett.
The dinner however, was where it’s at. Tables crammed together, it was like being submerged in a ball pit, except that one ball is Salma Hayek and that ball over there is Glenn Close and that ball over there is Bradley Cooper and that ball is Rachel Weisz being shielded by another ball that is Daniel Craig. I brushed past the broom-width shoulders of Joseph Fiennes who, thanks to The Handmaid’s Tale, I now look upon with extreme terror and disgust.
I weighed up what colour I would describe Valentino as, while he sat in deep conversation with Tamara Beckwith. Beckwith and I go way back, by the way. Specifically to a few months ago, when we were both late for the theatre and waited in the wings together for five minutes doing polite solidarity smiles to each other and performative eyerolls. I was reunited with Timothée Chalamet. I saw Taylor Swift and almost tripped over (look what you made me do). Everyone ate salmon and drank Taittinger champagne. The champagne was amazing. The salmon was OK.
A friendly woman came up to me in the loo and told me she liked my journalism and I wondered if there was any way I could relay this to the woman on the red carpet who had yelled at me for not being Margot Robbie. People walked by holding clutch bags, but also polystyrene bunnies nicked from the tables, some of which were themed after The Favourite. The talk was all of the Netflix party at the Chiltern Firehouse. Other people talked of going to Annabel’s in Mayfair. I went to the ballroom and drank cocktails the colour of an illness. I was flagging. I toyed with calling an Uber home. I decided to get the night bus. It was a 55-minute journey. I thought about Cate Blanchett.
