Ariana DeBose has finally spoken out about her Baftas performance that got everyone talking over the weekend.
During this year’s ceremony on Sunday night, the Oscar winner inadvertently caused a viral moment when she delivered an opening number celebrating the event’s female nominees.
After a quick blast of Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves, the West Side Story star launched into an original rap, name-checking everyone from Dolly De Leon (or, as Ariana renamed her, “Dolly D”), Kerry Condon and Carey Mulligan (“Kerry and Carey with a ‘C’”), Ana De Armas (“Ana, girl, you were great in Blonde”) and Danielle Deadwyler (“Danielle D, you broke my heart”).
Things reached a crescendo as Ariana declared: “Angela Bassett did the thing, Viola Davis, my Woman King, Blanchett, Cate, you’re a genius, Jamie Lee you are all of us.”
In the days since, clips of the performance have been doing the rounds on social media pretty much non-stop, which Zoe Ball asked Ariana about as part of a pre-recorded interview on the Radio 2 breakfast show, which will be broadcast on Monday.
Per the Daily Mail, Zoe told her guest: “Can I just say, our listeners, we all loved your performance. And that whole… I don’t know what happened there?”
“You know what? You might be one of the few,” Ariana joked. “But I’ll take it… you’re my people!”
She continued: “It’s not like I was like ‘‘Hey Bafta… let me in!’. They actually called me – believe it or not.
“But that was the assignment, like come celebrate women, and I was like ‘absolutely!’. And we did that and it was fun, not going to lie, I had a blast. So awesome.”
Ariana concluded: “Apparently gay Twitter seemed to like it. So that’s good… I’ll take it!”
Ariana’s performance was previously defended by Baftas producer Nick Bullen, who said he found the reaction “incredibly unfair, to be frank”.
“I absolutely loved it,” he insisted. Everybody I’ve spoken to who was in the room absolutely loved it.
“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,” he continued.
“I think a lot of people don’t like change, and there’s a view that the BAFTAs have to be this slightly stiff, traditional British, middle-England messaging.
“But American awards shows have much more razzmatazz, much more showbiz, and perhaps a broader range of people being involved. We felt we’re not about revolution, we’re about evolution.”
The Radio 2 breakfast show airs every weekday from 6.30am.