Baftas 2022 host Rebel Wilson cracked a joke about Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith’s much-publicised open relationship, after he won the award for Leading Actor on Sunday night (13 March).
Smith won the prize for his performance in King Richard as Richard Williams, the father of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams.
He was absent from the ceremony, so the film’s director Reinaldo Marcus Green accepted the award on his behalf.
Joking about Smith’s win, Wilson said she thought his “best performance in the past year was being OK with all his wife’s boyfriends”.
When the crown groaned, she said: “Come on, he never showed up!”
Last year, Smith said that both he and his wife have had sexual relationships with other people during their marriage.
Smith beat a strong set of competitors in the category. Adeel Akhtar (Ali & Ava), Mahershala Ali (Swan Song), Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog), Leonardo DiCaprio (Don’t Look Up) and Stephen Graham (Boiling Point) were all also nominated.
At this year’s Baftas – which took place at the Royal Albert Hall in London – Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic Dune led the pack with 11 nominations, closely followed by Jane Campion’s western The Power of the Dog, which amassed a total of eight.
See the full winners list here.
