Ariana DeBose “did the thing” at the BAFTAs — and honestly, people need to calm down about it.
That’s basically what Nick Bullen, a producer for the London-based awards show, told Variety in a Q&A published Monday, the morning after DeBose’s rap honoring the women nominees at Sunday’s ceremony provoked jeers and trolling on social media.
During the show, the “West Side Story” Oscar winner performed a musical number that included a brief rap shouting out women acting nominees by name.
“Angela Bassett did the thing,” she rapped. “Viola Davis, my ‘Woman King’ / Blanchett Cate, you’re a genius / Jamie Lee, you are all of us.”
The rap has garnered plenty of reaction on Twitter, where fans noticed DeBose appears to have disabled her account. Many were critical of the performance. “ariana debose you’re an oscar winner you don’t have to do this i promise,” wrote @aramnotagoat, along with a clip of the rap.
Bullen said he “absolutely loved” the performance and called any mockery of DeBose “incredibly unfair, to be frank.”
“Everybody I’ve spoken to who was in the room absolutely loved it. She’s a huge star. She was amazing,” he said. “The room was clapping, and people were sort of dancing to the music. 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. And here is a woman of color who is at the absolute top of her game.”
Bullen also explained how the performance came to be, saying DeBose and her team “put the whole piece together.”
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“She only had a few weeks to put this whole thing together,” he said. “She worked with a great musical director and choreographer, so it was a real team effort.”
According to Bullen, the goal with this year’s BAFTAs was to feel less “stiff” and to capture the “razzmatazz” of an American awards show.
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“We felt we’re not about revolution. We’re about evolution,” he said. “Let’s just evolve, let’s just move forward with some gentle changes that start to lay out the stall of what this show should be and where we should be with it.”
He added: “We wanted to open the show with some energy, some fun, and also lay out straight away that this was hopefully going to feel like a different night, but with a familiarity as well, and what Ariana did was exactly that.”
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Many people also took to Twitter to celebrate DeBose’s performance and the joy it brought them.
“People are actually *TALKING* about the BAFTA Awards?!” @aguirreryan wrote. “They should be giving Ariana DeBose a RAISE and a PROMOTION.”
“When Angela Bassett wins the oscar she must start (her) speech by saying ‘and in the words of ariana debose, i did the thing,’ ” Variety culture writer and critic Murtada Elfadl wrote.
“I hope Ariana Debose doesn’t feel too bad,” author Bolu Babalola wrote. “This is about to be a camp cultural artefact and I mean that.”
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