A Night of Honors and Memories at the BAFTA TV Awards
Seth Rogen took to the stage at the BAFTA TV Awards in London, where he accepted an award for his hit series The Studio in the International category. The 44-year-old actor used the moment to pay tribute to his late co-star, Catherine O’Hara, who passed away in January at the age of 71. O’Hara, best known for her role in Home Alone, played Patty Leigh in the show.
Rogen dedicated the win to O’Hara, saying: “I’d be remiss not to mention one of the key parts of the show, Catherine O’Hara. She meant so much to all of us. I assume her work has been so important to you all over here as it was to us. So this is for Catherine.”
At the Actor Awards in March, O’Hara was posthumously honored with the Female Actor in a Comedy Series award for her work on The Studio. Rogen accepted the award on her behalf, adding:
“I’ve been given the sad honor of accepting this award on O’Hara’s behalf.
I know she would have been honored to receive this award from her fellow performers, who I know she respected so much. She was such big fans of all of yours.
I, obviously, have been reflecting on the time I was fortunate enough to spend with her, working with her, and something that I’ve just been marveling at over the last few weeks was really her ability to be generous and kind, while never ever minimizing her own ability to contribute to the work that we were doing.”
Owen Cooper Makes History
Owen Cooper continued his winning streak at the British Academy Television Awards. The 16-year-old actor became the youngest winner of the Best Supporting Actor award at both the Golden Globes and the Emmy Awards. He took home the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor at London’s Royal Festival Hall.
Meanwhile, his onscreen mother, Christine Tremarco, won Best Supporting Actress in a surprise result, beating co-star Erin Doherty, who had previously won the Golden Globe and Emmy Award.
Stephen Graham and Adolescence
Stephen Graham made history with his performance in Adolescence, a Netflix series created by him and writer Jack Thorne. The drama follows the story of British teenager Jamie Miller, who is found guilty of murdering a female classmate after being influenced by the manosphere online.
Each episode is filmed in one continuous shot and has been praised for addressing topics such as online radicalization and misogyny. Graham received 11 nominations for the drama, as well as seven for his Disney+ series A Thousand Blows.
Graham wiped away tears as Christine Tremarco took to the stage, saying: “I hold this BAFTA high to Hannah Walters and Stephen Graham, thank you so much.” The series also won in the Limited Drama category, beating shows like Fought The Law (ITV), Trespasses (Channel 4), and What It Feels Like For A Girl (BBC Three).
Other Notable Winners
Claudia Winkleman accepted the Reality Award for The Celebrity Traitors. The host, 54, revealed she had flown down from Scotland on Saturday morning from filming the second series to collect the gong. She left less than half an hour after receiving the BAFTA to get back on the plane and return to Ardross Castle.
The Entertainment BAFTA was awarded to Last One Laughing, a show that follows ten comedians competing to make each other laugh without laughing themselves. Host Roisin Conaty said: “Thank you, it’s such an amazing honour. This is such a beast of a show, it’s like a war room.” Judi Love added: “This was a show that you can sit down and enjoy with all generations of your family, and that’s what TV in the UK is about.”
Comedy and Factual Awards
Steve Coogan won a BAFTA for actor in a comedy for his performance in How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge). He joked: “If anyone wants to know when Alan Partridge is going to die, it’s probably about the same time as I am going to die – I will keep doing it. Doing comedy in times like this is so important and it’s a privilege to make people laugh. I’m not going to be very funny because my comedy writers haven’t written anything funny for me to say.”
Katherine Parkinson won a BAFTA as best actor in a comedy for Here We Go and thanked her husband Stephen, who she said “wasn’t here tonight because he didn’t think I’d win.”
Factual and Current Affairs Awards
The Specialist Factual BAFTA was won by Simon Schama’s The Road to Auschwitz. The historian said: “I think the BBC is the only broadcasting institution that would dare to make this kind of film.”
The BAFTA for factual series went to See No Evil, which explores the career of prolific abuser John Smyth and the 35-year cover-up that led to the fall of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The BAFTA single documentary went to Grenfell: Uncovered. The Current Affairs BAFTA went to the series Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, which had been commissioned by the BBC but aired on Channel 4.
The corporation paused its production following the launch of an investigation into another documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, which starred the son of a leader of Hamas — a fact that the film failed to mention.
