EXCLUSIVE: This Sunday’s BAFTA TV Awards will “celebrate and remember the power of storytelling” at a “challenging” time for the industry, according to the new chair of the 77-year-old body.
Speaking exclusively to Deadline in the days leading up to the London ceremony, Sara Putt, who replaced Krishnendu Majumdar last year, said the awards will partly act as a tonic against the bad times, allowing “a community to come together, network, and be creative and supportive of each other.”
She acknowledged that 2023 was a “challenging year for many in the industry, whether freelancers or small indies,” coming a few months after BAFTA research found one third are considering leaving.
“We [at BAFTA] have many roles to play and it is important when times are hard to celebrate and remember the power of storytelling,” Putt said.
Nominated shows about local British stories such as BBC One’s The Sixth Commandment or ITV’s The Long Shadow show that great storytelling can be “inspirational” during times of strife, she added. Smash hit Mr Bates vs. the Post Office was ineligible for this year’s awards as it premiered in January 2024, but will likely be a strong contender for the 2025 gongs.
Without giving much away, Putt said her maiden BAFTA TV Awards speech will touch on these themes of hardship. Her BAFTA TV Craft Awards address two weeks ago labelled the situation for behind the camera talent “grim” amidst the economic slowdown and fallout from U.S. strikes.
She said BAFTA can play a role in helping the community through the hardship by being an “academy of practitioners” across film, TV and also the gaming industry. “Career agility is important and we’re talking about breaking down silos between film, TV and games so individuals can best equip themselves to maximize opportunity in different areas.”
Noms show “mixed economy”
The Crown, Black Mirror, Happy Valley and Top Boy are all nominated on multiple occasions for this year’s BAFTAs and Putt said the clutch of noms shows that the UK TV industry is a “mixed economy,” replete with big streamer shows alongside breakthrough broadcasting talent such as Kat Sadler, the writer of scripted comedy nominee Such Brave Girls for the BBC.
The awards body has in the past been placed under the microscope for its lack of diverse nominations but Putt said this year’s nominees are broadly in line with last year’s in terms of proportion of people from under-represented backgrounds, with high-profile examples including Top Boy’s Kane Robinson. The Lazarus Project’s Paapa Essiedu and Black Mirror’s Anjana Vasan.
BAFTA has input both at the start and end of the diversity pipeline, Putt explained, helping people from under-represented backgrounds into the industry at junior level and then showcasing their talents once they have been nominated at awards level. Since becoming chair, the body has focused on improving the landscape for those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who have “limited opportunities,” she said.
Questions have repeatedly been raised over whether more international stars should be given opportunities to win BAFTAs for shows created by Brits such as Succession duo Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin, who are ineligible because they are not British and do not regularly work or live in the UK.
But while not overly weighing in on the work of the BAFTA TV committee she used to oversee, Putt said “you have to bare in mind these are the British Academy awards, are about the amazing TV landscape in this country and within that we want to celebrate British talent,” although she is happy to celebrate British talent making waves in international TV.
Agency hat
Putt has been running Sara Putt Associates, an agency that represents off-screen talent, for more than three decades, making her just the second BAFTA chair who is simultaneously an agent.
She said this experience helps give her a unique view on the industry and how to celebrate talent via BAFTA.
“My job is about nurturing talent and BAFTA’s is about celebrating, inspiring and supporting talent so the lovely thing for me is that they are all part of the same hole,” said Putt. “I wouldn’t want to be hubristic [about my agency] but there is absolutely some crossover both in terms of BAFTA’s work though our awards and through initiatives in which we support talent on a very intersectional level.”
Elsewhere, Putt used her first letter to members in September 2023 to make a coded reference to the allegations made against Russell Brand, along with wider issues around bullying and harassment in the UK film and TV industries. Eight months on, she told us combatting bullying and harassment remains a joint effort that BAFTA is working on with the likes of the BFI, The Film & Television Charity and new independent standards authority CIISA, coming a few years after Doctor Who actor Noel Clarke’s alleged behavior was exposed by a Guardian investigation on the same weekend he was given an Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema BAFTA. Both Brand and Clarke deny the allegations made against them.
“The work is ongoing and we all have a responsibility,” said Putt. “The more we can share information and run initiatives, the more we can put in place both preventative measures and find ways that people can safely call out bad behavior. These conversations are complex, nuanced and incredibly important.”
Reflecting on her near-first year in the BAFTA job, a role she took on immediately after Jane Millichip became CEO, Putt said it had been a “learning curve,” and that the storied organization is “more complicated than I could have imagined.”
“I am a punter [at the awards] as much as anyone else and so to be able to sit in that audience and enjoy an amazing show is always exciting,” she added. “When you look at the rigor of our jury system, you see why it is a huge, huge deal to be nominated by your peers. Jurors say this is the best conversation they have about TV all year.”
The BAFTA TV Awards take place on Sunday. Deadline revealed earlier this week that BAFTA President Prince William and wife Kate Middleton will not attend but that William has instead recorded a video message.
