Doctor Who actor Phil Davis slams BAFTA Awards show as 'embarrassing travesty,' says he resigned

Sunday's BAFTA Awards confirmed that Angela Bassett did the thing (and anointed Viola Davis as Ariana DeBose's official woman king), but Doctor Who and Vera Drake actor Phil Davis wasn't impressed by the collective show put on by the British Academy.

"The BAFTA awards were an embarrassing travesty," the 69-year-old London native tweeted Wednesday in an incendiary message slamming Sunday's telecast. "Cutting deserving winners speeches for toe curling non interviews. Poor [ceremony host] Richard E Grant pretending to arrive in a Batmobile and no Bernard Cribbens in memorium [sic]. I resigned my membership." (Cribbins, Davis' fellow Doctor Who actor, passed away in 2022.)

EW Has reached out to representatives for BAFTA for comment and confirmation on Davis' status as a member.

Though Davis didn't name DeBose in his tweet, her musical performance honoring the evening's female nominees quickly went viral, with some citing it as hilarious camp and others deriding it as cringe-worthy, judging by the unenthused looks on the faces of Ana de Armas, Dolly de Leon, and others name-dropped by the Oscar-winning actress during the set.

Nick Bullen, a producer for the ceremony, later spoke out against the backlash after DeBose deactivated her Twitter account. "I think it's incredibly unfair, to be frank," he told Variety. "I absolutely loved it. Everybody I've spoken to who was in the room absolutely loved it. She's a huge star, she was amazing."

"That rap section in the middle, mentioning the women in the room, was because it's been a great year for women in film, and we wanted to celebrate that," Bullen continued. "And here is a woman of color who is at the absolute top of her game. And she's opening the BAFTAs with a song that said so much on so many levels."

Another broadcast gaffe saw last year's Best Supporting Actor winner Troy Kotsur — who later became the first deaf actor to win the corresponding Oscar for his performance in CODA — correctly signing that Kerry Condon had won Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Banshees of Inisherin, though the sign language interpreter providing voiceover mistakenly announced that She Said performer Carey Mulligan had won instead.

BAFTA seemingly edited the error out of the eventual broadcast, which aired later in the evening.

The BAFTA Awards are often considered a prestigious stop in the Oscars race, as their voting membership largely crosses over with that of The Academy's. Other major winners this year included likely Oscar winner Austin Butler for his leading performance in Elvis, Cate Blanchett for TÁR, and Banshees' Barry Keoghan pulling off a statistical upset over Everything Everywhere All at Once actor Ke Huy Quan for Best Supporting Actor.

Read Davis' full tweet slamming the 2023 BAFTA Awards above.

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