23rd February 2026
The morning after the night before. Your head hurts, your mouth tastes like cheap prosecco and gratitude, and there’s a gold-plated doorstop in the shape of a theatrical mask staring at you from the mantelpiece. It’s the BAFTAs. The biggest night in British film. This year’s ceremony had it all – shock upsets, Paddington Bear and Paul Thomas Anderson collecting BAFTAs like the rest of us collect Allen keys. His One Battle After Another came in with fourteen nominations and walked out with nearly half of them converted. The man is a machine.
But the real story was the carnage elsewhere. Timothée Chalamet arrived as the Best Actor frontrunner with Marty Supreme carrying nine nominations. He left with zero. A historic shutout.
Instead, the award went to Robert Aramayo – a 33-year-old lad from Hull who was so convinced he wouldn’t win that he hadn’t written a speech. “I didn’t even write anything because I just didn’t think that was gonna happen,” he told reporters, still looking like someone had hit him with a plank. He starred in I Swear, a biopic about Tourette Syndrome campaigner John Davidson, who was in the audience – involuntary tics and all.
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners took three prizes, including Original Screenplay – making Coogler the first Black winner in that category. Jessie Buckley won Best Actress for Hamnet and delivered a speech so chaotic she forgot her fellow nominees’ names. “Kate! Kate! There you are.” We’ve all been there, Jessie. Well, we haven’t. But we’ve all forgotten where we put the spirit level.
Now. We’ve buried the lede. Because amidst all the chaos, a little film called Frankenstein quietly swept the craft categories. Three BAFTAs. Costume Design for Kate Hawley. Make-Up & Hair for Jordan Samuel, Cliona Furey, Mike Hill, and Megan Many. And, the big one. Production Design for Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau. The BAFTA that says: the world you built was the best world anyone built this year. Better than Marty Supreme. Better than Hamnet. Better than One Battle After Another. The best.
We worked on Frankenstein. We helped build that world. And now it has a BAFTA on the shelf, and we’re going to be insufferable about it for approximately the rest of time.
Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got another world to build.
