Wunmi Mosaku is looking back on the distress she felt after a controversial moment during last month’s Bafta Film Awards, in which a racial slur from a Tourette’s advocate was aired by the BBC.
The 39-year-old British-Nigerian actress, who stars as Annie, the soulful and resilient Hoodoo healer and herbalist in Ryan Coogler’s 2025 film Sinners, now feels that the incident cast a “shadow” over her Best Supporting Actress win.
“Obviously, the Bafta win, there’s been a shadow. It’s been very difficult since the BBC decided to air what it aired,” Mosaku told Glamour magazine.
Mosaku recounted the immediate aftermath, noting how the cast supported each other. “I was (up for) the next award, so I came off the stage, and I saw them, and I hugged them.”
She criticised the broadcaster’s failure to censor the remark and insisted that “everyone who was impacted deserved the grace to have it taken out.”
“We’d been told that it was a family-friendly show at 7pm and that there was a two-hour delay. So how could it possibly have been left in?” the actress raised.
The slur was reportedly shouted by Tourette’s campaigner John Davidson as her Sinners co-stars Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo presented an award at the London event.
Following the incident, the BBC’s outgoing director-general Tim Davie expressed that the corporation “profoundly regrets” the events, while a fast-tracked investigation by its Executive Complaints Unit acknowledged the broadcast as a “serious mistake.”
Mosaku added that attending the NAACP Image Awards in California with Jordan and Lindo a week later offered a “healing” experience.
She also reflected on her personal life, including impending motherhood and her ADHD diagnosis.
“I now consider my ADHD in everything, so home life takes priority over socialising or texting on a group thread – I’m not trying to read all these messages,” she said of her recent priorities, particularly around home life and time management.
