A red box of SK’s Donuts sits open on the table between us, lid flipped back, “Best Donuts in Los Angeles, Est. 1989” stamped across the top. I joke with Aramayo before the mics are hot: This is why I booked the interview. He laughs, tears off a piece of a glazed and settles in as we sit outdoors on Variety’s rooftop.
He’s four days into a Los Angeles trip for meetings, the kind of week where you shake a lot of hands. Nobody tells you what they’re for, and he’s doing it as the reigning BAFTA best actor victor for a movie most of America hasn’t gotten around to yet. It rolled into the 79th BAFTA Film Awards with five nominations and, on Feb. 22, handed the 33-year-old from Hull, East Yorkshire, both the Rising Star Award and leading actor over Timothée Chalamet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ethan Hawke, Michael B.
Jordan and Jesse Plemons. Four of those men, save for Plemons, were nominated at the Oscars. Nobody had ever won both in the same night.
Sony Pictures Classics didn’t open the film stateside until April 24, which makes it eligible for this year’s Oscar lineup, where Aramayo faces a barrage of new leading contenders such as Andrew Scott, John Malkovich, Pedro Pascal, Matt Damon and more. And as more viewers continue to discover “I Swear,” Aramayo could be a viable (and worthy) dark horse entrant to the Oscar conversation. That split calendar is one reason the film plays like a new movie on a second look.
The other reason is what happened on the BAFTA night itself. The real-life Davidson, attending as an executive producer on the film, sat near a live microphone, a few seats behind Aramayo. His involuntary vocal tics, including a racial slur, shouted as Jordan and Delroy Lindo presented.
They were heard on the broadcast, and BAFTA apologized to the presenters. Davidson, who left the ceremony on his own in the second half, told Variety afterward he felt “a wave of shame.” And for weeks, the discourse swallowed the film whole. Aramayo isn’t sitting here to relitigate the controversy.
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