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20th Feb 2018

Jennifer Lawrence explains exactly why she ‘dissed’ Joanna Lumley on stage at BAFTAs

James Dawson

She was slammed yesterday for her rudeness towards the British actress.

So, let’s just recap, it was the BAFTAs on Sunday night and as usual the ceremony provided us with some controversial moments.

Get Out actor Daniel Kaluuya, for instance, threw the rule book out of the window during his speech as he revealed the existence of a secret clock governing his time on stage. However, the biggest shock came at the very beginning of the show, when Jennifer Lawrence decided to throw a bit of verbal side-eye at Ab Fab actor Joanna Lumley.

Beginning the ceremony, Lumley said: “Right let’s start giving out some of those beautiful BAFTAs shall we?

“And we start with the award for Outstanding British Film and who better to kick the whole evening off than the hottest actress on the planet.

“Soon to be seen in Red Sparrow, it’s the ravishing Jennifer Lawrence.”

However, despite the glowing reception, when Lawrence  took to the mic, she replied: “Hi, that was a bit much but thank you, Joanna.”

Now the 27-year-old actor has explained to Magic Radio what really went on, insisting the remark was simply an ‘inside joke’.

She explained to Ronan Keating on Magic: “Backstage Joanna and I were about to go out and she was going to present me. So I’m like, just adjective after adjective, ‘tall, beautiful, just say that I’m this and that,’ and she was like, ‘alright darling,’ so it was an inside joke and she went on and said all these nice things to me, so when I got onto to the podium I said, ‘that was a bit much’ like after I’d just spent backstage telling her to be nice to me.”

The Oscar winner added that if she’d responded differently ‘it would have looked as if she was accepting a compliment Mean Girl style’.

She continued: “Everybody thought that I was being rude

“But to be fair, I couldn’t have just walked out after she was like, ‘biggest movie star in the world!’ And I’d just walked out and gone ‘thank you Joanna’.

“It would have been like, ‘so you agree? You think you’re really pretty?’

“I wasn’t being rude, it was an inside joke. Well I’m always rude.”

So I guess that clears things up.