BAFTAs Unveiled: Edith Bowmans Best Red Carpet Moments

It's one of the glitziest nights in the film calendar, where Hollywood's finest descend on London to celebrate the best and brightest in British cinema.

And as a longtime attendee of the British Academy Film Awards, Edith Bowman has shared some of the more unlikely tales from the evening.

The BBC radio star and film fanatic, 52, has mingled with some of the industry's biggest names, interviewing stars from Olivia Colman and Martin Scorsese to Russell Crowe.

Speaking to Daily Mail ahead of Sunday's star-studded ceremony, Edith revealed she had a hilarious encounter with Hugh Jackman while on a rain-soaked red carpet back in 2013, when she was nearly nine months pregnant with her son Spike.

The presenter, who is working with Samsung, the awards' first technology partner, also shared her tearful encounter with BAFTA winner Olivia Colman after she was awarded Best Actress for The Favourite back in 2018.

This year's BAFTAs nominations were announced last month, with One Battle After Another earned the most nods with 14, including one for lead star Leonardo DiCaprio.

Edith Bowman has revealed her most hilarious behind-the-scenes tales from attending the BAFTAs, ahead of the star-studded ceremony this weekend

Reflecting on her experience at the coveted awards, Edith shared: 'One of my favorite things that I've done over the years is, I mean, I love working at them. I feel slightly weird going if I'm not working because I just quite like being in the thick of it.

'And I've had some really funny moments, I was on the red carpet and I was eight and a half months pregnant, I think, in 2013 with Spike, who will be 13 this month.

'And I remember Hugh Jackman coming up and going ''what the hell are you doing here?'' And taking his coat off and putting it round my shoulders. 

'And it was one of those really rainy years because I remember, I had a long black dress on and it was like I'd stepped in knee-high water because my dress just absorbed the water from the carpet up to my knees, but it was amazing fun. I got to take my mum when we went to the parties.

'And then I think one of my favorite bits is doing the winners' rooms, so when they come off stage... and two amazing females that I was lucky enough to chat to.

'Olivia Colman, who I think it was The Favourite and she'd forgotten to thank her husband, Ed, in the speech, and so I was like ''well do it now''. 

'So she did it in my chat and then she burst into tears. But I love her, she's one of my favorites.

'And then a proper pinch me moment was getting to chat to Frances McDormand. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, the fantastic Martin McDonagh film. It won loads of awards that year. 

Speaking to Daily Mail ahead of Sunday's star-studded ceremony, Edith revealed she had a hilarious encounter with Hugh Jackman while on a rain-soaked red carpet back in 2013

Edith said she met Hugh at the ceremony in 2013, when she was nearly nine months pregnant with her son, and he offered her his coat due to the wet weather

The presenter also shared her tearful encounter with BAFTA winner Olivia Colman after she was awarded Best Actress for The Favourite back in 2018

Edith also revealed she earned rare praise from Frances McDormand, who rarely does interviews, after she won a BAFTA for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

'And she came back with the whole crew, Sam Rockwell, Martin. And she never really says anything to the press and stuff, but I really pressed, and she was kind of like, ''you're good''. And I was like, ''okay, I'll have that on my gravestone''.' 

For many film fans, tuning in to the BAFTAs each year is a tradition, but Edith has revealed that much of the ceremony broadcast on TV is stark contrast to the real thing.

She revealed: 'It's all edited, it's all tidied up like so I mean, my favorite bits are the red carpet and then the winners stuff.

'The ceremony is great and don't get me wrong I'm so privileged to have been there a few times... the Royal Festival was a beautiful venue to have it in. It's like a set of Star Wars, I think.

'It's like almost those kind of way these sort of balconies jut out and things. It's incredible. 

'But I don't know whether it's because in my career, when I started doing music and festivals, my first experience of a festival was working at it.

'My first experience of a film award show was working on it. So I kind of, I really love that side of it because you are kind of behind the scenes, so you do get those moments of kind of like people kind of being emotional about things, you get to see the sort of genuine things.

'But I do, I actually love watching it at home because you kind of like, I don't know, you get up close and personal sort of thing as well.'

Edith added that while it's the post-awards parties that provide the most 'fun', she was tight-lipped on her experience at the bashes, comparing them to the famous film Fight Club.

The presenter has joined forces with Samsung TV as one of BAFTA's official partners, and spoke to Daily Mail alongside Director of Marketing for Samsung Home Entertainment & Appliance Zeena Hill.

In an era where streaming has begun to dominate the landscape, the pair agreed that cinema and television deserve to 'coexist.'

Zeena said: 'Honestly, we're so excited, we cannot be more excited. We had the mask in our office yesterday, which everybody wanted a touch. 

'And for us as a TV brand, and in terms of the technology we have on the TV, it's really such a beautiful, I think, partnership in terms of bringing for craftsmanship from BAFTA and everything it stands for, and obviously the craftsmanship that goes into our technology and the innovation.'

Edith added: 'I think it's that thing where, for me, it's, as a film fan of that whole kind of idea of cinema and T.V. coexisting, what's so kind of beautifully telling of Samsung's commitment to this partnership and kind of what they do with their technology is for us as consumers to make sure that we're having the kind of closest experience that we can have at home to what the filmmakers intended.'

She went on to add: 'It's down to the streamers to whether they commit to the films having a theatrical window. 

'And I think that you can see the streamers' commitment to that in the fact that so many more of Netflix films, for example, have that cinematic window to allow them to be award contenders.

'And I think that that's really exciting, to be honest, and the fact that Netflix have changed their whole approach to their original films, and that originally it was straight to streaming, but now they have that commitment to the filmmaking as a process, but also how important it is to invest in cinema.

'So I feel like it's something that's really healthy to see them change their whole business plan and model around giving films that opportunity.

'And from my experience with interviewing people, directors and stuff who've worked on films that have come out through Apple or Netflix, whether it be Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon or Gemma del Toro for Frankenstein, is that these streamers are as partners to these filmmakers. 

'They give them a freedom, they're not kind of the people, they're not there kind of micromanaging what they're doing and budgets and that kind of things. 

'There's an element of freedom that goes with that being part of one of these kind of big streamers as a distributor and a partner. So I think that as much as there's such a strong focus on the negative of that, I think there are a lot of positives to it as well.'

This year's BAFTAs nominations were announced last month, with One Battle After Another earned the most nods with 14, including one for lead star Leonardo DiCaprio 

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BAFTA 2026 nominations: One Battle After Another earns 14 nods

Days after its success at the Academy Award nominations, One Battle After Another has earned the most BAFTA nods with 14.

Sinners is just behind with 13 nods whilst Marty Supreme and Hamnet scored eleven each. Frankenstein and Sentimental Value each earned eight whilst there was five nominations for I Swear and Bugonia and three nominations for The Ballad of Wallis Island, Pillion and F1.

The five movies up for Best Film are Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, Sinners and Sentimental Value.

Hamnet, Chloe Zhao's adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's award-winning novel about the family life of William Shakespeare, has broken the record for the most nominations for a female-directed film in BAFTA history.

The winners will be announced on Sunday February 22 at the EE BAFTA Film Awards ceremony, which will air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.