1 year ago
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BAFTA Producer DEFENDS Ariana DeBose Over Viral Rap
After Ariana DeBose raised eyebrows implicit the BAFTA Film Awards thing, she did the explaining thing.
In what marked her first interview on her now-viral rap about the nominated actresses, the Oscar winner said she wanted to celebrate women with her show astatine the Feb. 19 ceremony.
"That's what I wanted to do," DeBose explained connected BBC Radio 2's The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show, arsenic seen successful an excerpt released connected TikTok Feb. 25. "It's not similar I was like, 'Hey BAFTA, fto maine in!' They really called me, judge it oregon not. That was the assignment, like, 'Come observe women.' I was like, 'Absolutely!' And we did that, and it was fun."
DeBose's show astatine the BAFTAs included covers of Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin's "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves" and Sister Sledge's "We Are Family." But it was her personalized rap, especially the lyric, "Angela Bassett did the thing," that sparked disapproval and memes.
While DeBose praised 1 of them connected Instagram, commenting, "Honestly I emotion this," she inactive deleted her Twitter amid the backlash.
But connected her BBC Radio 2 interview, she focused connected the positive. "Not gonna lie. I had a blast," she said astir her acquisition astatine the BAFTAs. "So awesome. And past I spent the remainder of the night...cutting a rug with Emma Thompson. Like, it was fabulous. I had a large time. Baz Luhrmann came and recovered maine and helium was like, 'No, I deliberation you're great, that was fun. I had fun.' And I was like, 'Work!'"
Kate Green/BAFTA/Getty Images for BAFTA
Amid the criticism, the West Side Story actress also received a bully magnitude of enactment connected societal media implicit her rap. "Apparently cheery Twitter seemed to similar it?" she said successful her BBC Radio 2 interview. "So that's good, I'll instrumentality it."
And connected Feb. 23, Lizzo rapped the Bassett line during her performance successful Amsterdam, arsenic seen successful a fan's TikTok video.
BAFTAs producer Nick Bullen told Variety the greeting aft the ceremony that the disapproval implicit DeBose's show is "incredibly unfair," adding that the actress "worked with a large philharmonic manager and choreographer" to enactment the portion together.
"I perfectly loved it," helium said. "Everybody I've spoken to who was successful the country perfectly loved it. She's a immense star, she was amazing. The songs she was singing are precise acquainted songs, the country was clapping, and radical were benignant of dancing to the music. That rap conception successful the middle, mentioning the women successful the room, was due to the fact that it's been a large twelvemonth for women successful film, and we wanted to observe that."
He added, "And present is simply a pistillate of colour who is astatine the implicit apical of her game. And she's opening the BAFTAs with a opus that said truthful overmuch connected truthful galore levels. All of those mentions, I felt, from the infinitesimal we were rehearsing it close done to the transmission past night, spoke to what we wanted to do."
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