Edward Berger And Colman Domingo Hail BAFTA Rising Star David Jonsson

Edward Berger, hot from his double-whammy Best Film and Outstanding British Film wins for Conclave at the EE BAFTA Film Awards, wanted to stop by the Searchlight after-party at Soho House’s Greek Street to laud Rising Star winner David Jonsson.

“He’s not a show-off,” an impressed Berger tells me after greeting Jonsson.

“[It] tells you a lot. Feet on the ground, incredibly laid back and I wanted to congratulate him,” Berger adds as he watches the Rye Lane and Alien: Romulus actor being feted by a group that included Olivia Homan, his agent at United Talent, and Ellie Norton his publicist at Track Publicity.

Berger notes that he was taken by a comment Jonsson made during his acceptance speech. 

“Star? I don’t know, but rising, I guess,” was the Jonsson line that Berger favored. 

“I liked his humility,” the filmmaker tells me. This was an observation that many others echoed.

“David’s like an old school movie star, humble and committed to the work. He’s got this old style quality, like Marlon Brando and Sidney Poitier,” Colman Domingo declares when we chat at the Netflix after-party that was hastily relocated to The Twenty Two boutique hotel, a splendrous Edwardian mansion house in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, following the fire that blazed at Netflix’s usual haunt, the Chiltern Firehouse, on Friday.

Domingo, nominated at both the BAFTA and Academy Awards for his performance in Sing Sing, boasts that he “got there first” when he cast Jonsson to portray legendary entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. in Scandalous!, which shoots later in the year.

Marking Domingo’s feature directing debut, the movie chronicles the fallout of the race-barrier breaking affair between the song and dance man and Kim Novak – played by Sydney Sweeney – in 1957.

Novak, star of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and George Sidney’s Pal Joey, and Davis had to contend with jealous threats of career termination by Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn who carried a torch for his “perfect blonde star.”

Opprobrium was heaped on them from all quarters “because the industry, and the country, was still strongly segregated,” Domingo explains.

”I chose David because, well, we know he can act, but he can also sing and dance, he’s shown me these tapes of him dancing and I know he’s putting in the hours to get ready,” Domingo says.

Earlier, on the BAFTA red carpet, Domingo was draped in Versace – a full length black leather coat under which he wore a silk print shirt unbuttoned down to his navel. “I like to shake things up and I know you Brits appreciate that,” he tells me.

Several hours later at the Twenty-Two, he’d switched to a black velvet Thierry Mugler ensemble. He knows how to wear his clothes well.

Back to Jonsson. He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where the likes of Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo and Conclave’s Ralph Fiennes honed their craft. “He’ll know how to locate Sammy Davis Jr.,” Domingo says of Jonsson who was raised in the old East London docklands district of Canning Town. 

The Netflix soirée encompassed two mammoth floors of intercommunicating rooms, heaving with guests from the BAFTA ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall, and others who’d driven in from their abodes.

Attendees included Zoe Saldaña, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sebastian Stan, Mikey Madison, Demi Moore, Kate Hudson, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Anna Kendrick, Jared Leto, Hugh Grant, Jeremy Strong, Domingo, Vanessa Kirby, Henry Golding, Riz Ahmed, Jeymes Samuel, Lupita Nyong’o, Celia Imrie, Jessica Gunning, Micheal Ward, Jessie Mei Li, Will Poulter, Joe Locke, Lucien Laviscount, Jay Lycurgo, Tom Harper, Sophie Wilde, Charithra Chandran, Dianna Agron, Wunmi Musaku, Malachi Kirby, Hannah John-Kamen, Yuriy Borisov, Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, Raffey Cassidy, Nathalie Emmanuel and many others.

Best daftest line of the night?: “Where the fuck is the caviar pasta?,” cried Doctor Who’s Ncuti Gatwa, one hopes, in jest, because while folk chomped away on chips (aka French fries), toasted cheese sarnies and mini beef burgers, washed down with flutes of champagne and exotic cocktails, there was no sign of the aforementioned pasta.

There was vegetarian caviar at the BAFTA dinner over at the Royal Festival Hall, and some people did utter f-bombs after tasting it, but it didn’t come with pasta.

Happiest couple? That’s gotta be  BAFTA-nominated Hard Truths star Marianne Jean-Baptiste and her husband, Evan Williams. They were sat in Soho House with Will Hollinshead, Marianne’s agent at Independent Talent Group, and Michele Austin, her co-star in the Mike Leigh film. It seemed like a table of calm and it made for a restful five-minute visit.  

My first port of call in the West End, had been to the Warner Bros. Pictures Post-BAFTA Cocktail reception in Kettner’s Townhouse. Denis Villeneuve was there and we had a smashing conversation about food and lack of sleep. It was a non-working event so I scrupulously adhered to the rules, as I always do, right? Not a word was spoken about a summer start for Dune 3: Messiah…

Surprises

I’m pleased the BAFTAs delivered a few surprises.

Certainly, Conclave’s terata and Mikey Madison’s Best Actress for Anora shook the predicted order, which is a good thing. It’s also a wake-up call.