BAFTA Cymru 2018
The 14th October 2018 saw the annual celebration of all things BAFTA Cymru in Cardiff, in the perfectly chosen venue that is the St David’s Hall. There were no real surprises as to whom was nominated for most of the awards this year; Keeping Faith has gathered so much well-deserved praise that the show was nominated for six awards. The show won three of those awards; Eve Myles for Best Actress, Matthew Hall for Best Writer and Amy Wadge/Laurence Love Creed for Best Original Music. To think that Keeping Faith was shot on a small budget, and simultaneously filmed both in Welsh and English for BBC Wales and S4C, marks it out as a real success story. Hearing from Eve Myles that the car that her character drove was actually the ‘real’ car that belonged to director Pip Broughton just cements how small a budget they had!
The Best Actor award category had nominations that consisted of Welsh favourites Ioan Gruffyd, Mark Lewis Jones and Rhodri Melir. Ioan stated; “I’m from Cardiff, so it’s great to come back to this part of the world and to be nominated with all these amazing actors, and two of them are for Welsh speaking performances, so that is pretty impressive really.” So, for it to be won by a relative newcomer to acting that is 21-year-old Jack Rowan, for his performance as Sam in Born To Kill is pretty impressive. Not bad for somebody’s first leading role and who never went to drama school! He told us “I was getting more and more nervous as the night was going on as I had known that the Actor category was going to be last. But this will always be a shock to me, I will constantly pinch myself having won this award.”
There were two special awards on the night, The BAFTA Cymru Special Award for Outstanding Contribution to Television and The Siân Phillips Award. These were awarded, respectively to BAFTA-nominee and Oscar-winning costume designer Lindy Hemming and presenter/broadcaster Mavis Nicholson. Lindy has worked on films such as the Dark Knight Trilogy, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Paddington and many more. Mavis Nicholson was the UK’s first female chat show host, whose 1979 interview with David Bowie marks one of her many highlights, along with those with Margaret Thatcher, Elizabeth Taylor, Dudley Moore – the list goes on to form a who’s who of 1970s through to 1990s.
The biggest surprise of the night was hearing the voice of Citation reader Aimee-Ffion Edwards in person. This writer was convinced she was a proper Birmingham native based on her character in Peaky Blinders called Esme Shelby. How wrong I was…
Words Carl Marsh