BBC apologizes for asking Andrew Scott sexual questions at professional event

What happened to the days of asking movie stars about… oh we don’t know… the movie they actually starred in on the red carpet? Hollywood may be glamorous and more than a little sexy, but it’s also a workplace. No one should have to answer a question about their colleague’s naked body in their place of employment unless they’re a dermatologist scanning another dermatologist for moles or something. Which would still be kind of weird.

The latest offender to participate in this incredibly frustrating trend is the BBC, who subjected All Of Us Strangers star Andrew Scott to an icky and repeated line of questioning about Barry Keoghan’s penis while covering the BAFTA awards earlier this week. In a video that has since gone viral, BBC correspondent Colin Paterson asked Scott, who is gay, how well he knew fellow Irish actor Barry Keoghan before pressing him to comment on the latter’s naked dance scene at the end of Saltburn, a movie Scott had nothing to do with. Scott, visibly uncomfortable, eventually walks away from the interviewer while he continues to pepper him with questions. Warning: it’s a pretty rough watch.

After widespread backlash on Twitter/X in which fans accused Paterson’s questions of being homophobic, “cringe-worthy,” and generally creepy, BBC issued a statement this morning apologizing for the whole incident. Well, sort of. “Saltburn is a film which has had cultural impact, with Barry Keoghan’s scene at the end gaining a lot of attention in particular—something the actor has addressed himself,” they wrote. “Our question to Andrew Scott was meant to be a light-hearted reflection of the discussion around the scene and was not intended to cause offence.” The statement also acknowledges that Saltburn director, Emerald Fennell, and Sophie Ellis-Bextor, whose song “Murder On The Dance Floor” is used in the scene, were questioned about it as well. While this may also have been uncomfortable, at least the two women were actually involved in the film. Scott, again, just happens to be an actor with a movie out around the same time who shares a homeland with Keoghan.

The statement concludes: “We do, however, accept that the specific question asked to Andrew Scott was misjudged. After speaking with Andrew on the carpet, our reporter acknowledged on air that his questioning may have gone too far and that he was sorry if this was the case.”

Unfortunately, Scott isn’t the only actor who’s been subjected to this sort of overtly sexual and extremely uncomfortable line of questioning in recent months. In January, Ayo Edebiri was asked to comment on her The Bear co-star Jeremy Allen White’s sexy Calvin Klein ad by two separate interviewers on the Golden Globes red carpet—a subject she clearly had no interest in engaging with. Just this week, TikTok influencer Harry Daniels also received a lot of negative attention for videos from the People’s Choice Awards in which he asked stars like Billie Eilish and America Ferrera if they’d rather have a “gay son or thot daughter,” to their visible discomfort.

Not only is this trend gross and invasive, but it’s also just plain boring. Actors put an unbelievable amount of work into making the movies that get nominated for these awards, and that’s what they should get to talk about during the celebration of that effort. It’s not even hard to get them to talk about movies they weren’t involved in (at least in Edebiri’s case) as long as the conversation hinges on the actual movie itself. Everything else should stay off the carpet.