Behind the Glitter: Edith Bowman’s Unforgettable BAFTA Moments
The British Academy Film Awards, or BAFTAs, are a highlight of the cinematic calendar, drawing Hollywood’s biggest stars to London to celebrate the crème de la crème of British filmmaking. While the red carpet glitters and the speeches are polished, long-time attendee and BBC radio star Edith Bowman has a treasure trove of more candid, and often hilarious, tales from the prestigious event. Having interviewed a galaxy of stars from Olivia Colman and Martin Scorsese to Russell Crowe, Bowman offers a unique, behind-the-scenes glimpse into the glitzy world of the BAFTAs.
“One of my favourite things that I’ve done over the years is, I mean, I love working at them,” Bowman, 52, shared ahead of a recent star-studded ceremony. “I feel slightly weird going if I’m not working because I just quite like being in the thick of it.” This immersion has led to some truly memorable encounters.
Rain-Soaked Encounters and Unexpected Kindness
One particularly vivid memory for Bowman harks back to 2013. “I was on the red carpet and I was eight and a half months pregnant, I think, with Spike, who will be 13 this month,” she recalled. “And I remember Hugh Jackman coming up and going, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ And taking his coat off and putting it round my shoulders.” The generosity of the Australian actor was a welcome gesture, especially given the conditions. “It was one of those really rainy years because I remember, I had a long black dress on and it was like I’d stepped in knee-high water because my dress just absorbed the water from the carpet up to my knees, but it was amazing fun.”
Beyond the unexpected acts of kindness, Bowman also cherishes the moments in the winners’ rooms. “And then I think one of my favourite bits is doing the winners’ rooms, so when they come off stage…”
Emotional Acceptance Speeches and “Pinch Me” Moments
The winners’ enclosure has provided its own share of heartwarming and tear-jerking moments. Bowman recounted an emotional encounter with BAFTA winner Olivia Colman after her Best Actress win for The Favourite in 2018. “Olivia Colman, who I think it was The Favourite and she’d forgotten to thank her husband, Ed, in the speech, and so I was like, ‘Well, do it now.’ So she did it in my chat and then she burst into tears. But I love her, she’s one of my favourites.”
Another “proper pinch me moment” for Bowman was interviewing Frances McDormand. “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, the fantastic Martin McDonagh film. It won loads of awards that year,” she reminisced. “And she came back with the whole crew, Sam Rockwell, Martin. And she never really says anything to the press and stuff, but I really pressed, and she was kind of like, ‘You’re good.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll have that on my gravestone.’”
The Reality vs. The Broadcast
For many viewers, tuning into the BAFTAs is a cherished annual tradition. However, Bowman points out that the broadcast we see on television is a carefully curated version of the actual event. “It’s all edited, it’s all tidied up,” she revealed. “So, I mean, my favourite bits are the red carpet and then the winners’ stuff.”
While she acknowledges the prestige of the ceremony itself, Bowman’s preference lies in the behind-the-scenes action. “The ceremony is great and don’t get me wrong, I’m so privileged to have been there a few times… the Royal Festival was a beautiful venue to have it in. It’s like a set of Star Wars, I think.” She elaborated on her affinity for the less polished aspects: “But I don’t know whether it’s because in my career, when I started doing music and festivals, my first experience of a festival was working at it. My first experience of a film award show was working on it. So I kind of, I really love that side of it because you are kind of behind the scenes, so you do get those moments of kind of like people kind of being emotional about things, you get to see the sort of genuine things.”
Despite her preference for the “behind-the-scenes” experience, Bowman admits to enjoying the BAFTAs from the comfort of her own home. “But I do, I actually love watching it at home because you kind of like, I don’t know, you get up close and personal sort of thing as well.”
The Elusive Post-Awards Parties
When asked about the post-awards parties, Bowman offered a coy response, comparing them to the famous film Fight Club. “She was tight-lipped on her experience at the bashes,” suggesting that what happens at the BAFTAs, stays at the BAFTAs.
Cinema and Streaming: A Harmonious Future?
Bowman’s involvement with Samsung TV as an official partner of BAFTA also brought to light discussions about the evolving relationship between cinema and streaming services. Alongside Zeena Hill, Director of Marketing for Samsung Home Entertainment & Appliance, Bowman expressed her belief that both mediums deserve to “coexist.”
“Honestly, we’re so excited, we cannot be more excited,” said Hill of the partnership. “And for us as a TV brand, and in terms of the technology we have on the TV, it’s really such a beautiful, I think, partnership in terms of bringing for craftsmanship from BAFTA and everything it stands for, and obviously the craftsmanship that goes into our technology and the innovation.”
Bowman echoed this sentiment, emphasizing the importance of technology in replicating the cinematic experience at home. “I think it’s that thing where, for me, it’s, as a film fan of that whole kind of idea of cinema and T.V. coexisting, what’s so kind of beautifully telling of Samsung’s commitment to this partnership and kind of what they do with their technology is for us as consumers to make sure that we’re having the kind of closest experience that we can have at home to what the filmmakers intended.”
She further highlighted the positive shift in streaming platforms’ approach to filmmaking. “It’s down to the streamers to whether they commit to the films having a theatrical window. And I think that you can see the streamers’ commitment to that in the fact that so many more of Netflix films, for example, have that cinematic window to allow them to be award contenders.” Bowman praised Netflix’s altered strategy: “And I think that that’s really exciting, to be honest, and the fact that Netflix have changed their whole approach to their original films, and that originally it was straight to streaming, but now they have that commitment to the filmmaking as a process, but also how important it is to invest in cinema.”
Drawing on her interviews with filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Guillermo del Toro, Bowman noted the freedom streamers can offer. “There’s an element of freedom that goes with that being part of one of these kind of big streamers as a distributor and a partner. So I think that as much as there’s such a strong focus on the negative of that, I think there are a lot of positives to it as well.”
BAFTA Nominations Roundup
Looking ahead to recent awards, the film One Battle After Another led the nominations with an impressive 14 nods, including one for its lead star, Leonardo DiCaprio. Other films with significant nominations included:
- Sinners (13 nominations)
- Marty Supreme and Hamnet (11 nominations each)
- Frankenstein and Sentimental Value (8 nominations each)
- I Swear and Bugonia (5 nominations each)
- The Ballad of Wallis Island, Pillion, and F1 (3 nominations each)
The nominees for Best Film were Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, Sinners, and Sentimental Value. Notably, Hamnet, Chloe Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, made history by securing the most nominations for a female-directed film in BAFTA history. The winners were set to be announced at the EE BAFTA Film Awards ceremony, broadcast on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
