Sunday’s BAFTAs weren’t especially surprising, until they were. The 77th annual celebration of film from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts honored projects and faces quite familiar to the awards-following set, folks like Emma Stone and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, as well as general frontrunners Poor Things and Oppenheimer. It’s that latter film that offered a belatedly puzzling moment—not because it won best picture, which most expected—but because of an unfamiliar face on the stage.
If you look at the photo above, you’ll see a man standing between Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan and his wife and producing partner, Emma Thomas. “Who is that guy?” many of us muttered to ourselves as the team behind the winning film took the dais, before shrugging and assuming he was part of the BAFTA production team, perhaps, who got caught in center stage at just the wrong moment. We were wrong.
According to the British Academy, the man was actually an attention-seeking user of the internet, who somehow breached show security to hop into the spotlight.
“A social media prankster was removed by security last night after joining the winners of the final award on stage,” the British Academy told Variety. “We are taking this very seriously, and don’t wish to grant him any publicity by commenting further.” (True to their word, BAFTA representatives have not responded to Vanity Fair’s request for comment as of publication time.)
It’s unclear where in the audience he came from, or how he gained access to the event. When presenter Michael J. Fox announced that Oppenheimer had been named best picture by the Academy, Nolan, Thomas, producer Charles Roven, and star Cillian Murphy headed to the stage from the right, as Thomas exhorted other folks from the film to come forward. “Where are you? Come on, all of you!” she said. At that same time, the interloper trotted up the stage stairs from the other side of the audience—a move that, given Thomas’s call, suggested to outsiders that he was part of the extended Oppenheimer crew.
He stood silently as Thomas delivered an acceptance speech on behalf of the film, clapped along with everyone else, then seemed to tuck something under his arm as he walked offstage with the Oppenheimer team.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the man has “crashed the Brit Awards and FIFA Ballon d’Or awards in France” in the past. The Guardian, which named the alleged prankster, reports that he has since announced via Instagram that he was recording from the stage—but that police confiscated at least some of his footage.