Ariana DeBose is addressing her recent BAFTAs performance after it went viral for all the wrong reasons.
The actor and singer was widely mocked online for awkwardly rapping about all the nominated women at Sunday’s British Academy Film Awards. DeBose appeared to go silent and even deactivated her Twitter account amid the ridicule, but she emerged in person Saturday to address the fiasco.
“Honestly, it’s not like I was like, ‘Hey BAFTA, let me in!’” she told host Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2’s “Breakfast Show.”
“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.”
DeBose told Ball that performing for her peers was “awesome” and “fabulous,” adding that she followed it up by “cutting a rug” with actor Emma Thompson. The Oscar-winning “West Side Story” star also said that director Baz Luhrmann, who won two BAFTAs in 1998, told her she did well.
“He was like: ‘No, I think you’re great. That was fun. I had fun,’” DeBose told Ball. “And I was like, ‘work.’ That’s a win, you guys. And apparently, gay Twitter seemed to like it, so that’s good. I’ll take it.”