Lauren Evans did not have a speech ready in February. She may want one for October.
The casting director from Hendy, whose “my kids tomorrow will not give a damn” acceptance at the BAFTA Film Awards became the clip of the night, is to receive BAFTA Cymru’s Outstanding Contribution to Craft award, one of the two special honours the academy announced on Wednesday.
It goes to a Welsh individual who has made exceptional contributions to a craft role in film or television.
From Hendy to Game of Thrones
Evans began her career working for Kate Dowd, who cast Finding Neverland, then spent six years with Nina Gold on Game of Thrones, King Lear and The Danish Girl before going independent in 2018.
Since then she has cast all four series of Sex Education, launching Emma Mackey, Aimee Lou Wood and Ncuti Gatwa, the bilingual Welsh series Lost Boys & Fairies, and Mint. In February she won the BAFTA Film Award for Casting for I Swear, the story of Tourette syndrome campaigner John Davidson, and then spoke out when the BBC broadcast a slur from Davidson’s tics during the ceremony.
Her reaction to this one was in character. “Being honoured with this award came out of nowhere,” she said. “Obviously, it was very lovely, but there’s a part of you that just feels a bit silly, like: ‘have they got the right person?'”
On the job itself: “We work as part of a big team to create a world and populate the worlds that are being created for programmes and films. It’s up to us to keep our fingers on the pulse, to know who actors are, which new ones are coming through and how you would build an ensemble that feels cohesive and tonally right. It’s about championing new talent and ensuring diversity across all communities.”
And on where she comes from: “It’s hard when you’re from outside London to get your foot in the door. It can be difficult, logistically and financially, to be part of it. We need to keep elevating our Welsh creatives and our Welsh talent, to ensure that they know there are opportunities for them. It’s not as much of a closed industry as it was, but there is still so much more work to be done.”
Vorderman takes the top award
The other special award, the Siân Phillips Award for Outstanding Contribution, goes to Carol Vorderman, raised in Prestatyn, for a television career that began when her mother forged her signature on an application to Countdown.
She spent more than two decades on the programme with Richard Whiteley, went on to Loose Women, Tomorrow’s World and Have I Got News for You, co-created the Pride of Britain Awards and chaired a government task force on maths education. She was made an MBE in 2000.
“I opened the letter and I thought, ‘Really?'” she said. “And then I read the list of other recipients like Russell T Davies and everybody and thought ‘Wow!’ When I was starting off, there were no jobs, particularly in North Wales. The opportunities that are available for people now in Wales and in the regions did not exist.”
Countdown, she said, was the proudest of it: “We built it up to what it became, we worked very hard on it, and we laughed like drains. They were magical times.”
Lee Walters, chair of BAFTA Cymru, said Vorderman had been “part of British television for more than four decades” and that Evans’s career was “equally impressive”, with “a real commitment to finding and championing talent, including new Welsh talent coming through”.
Vorderman has already met her host. On S4C’s Iaith ar Daith, where public figures learn Welsh with a mentor, she was paired with Owain Wyn Evans.
Both awards will be presented at the BAFTA Cymru Awards at ICC Wales in Newport on Sunday 4 October, hosted for a third year by Owain Wyn Evans.
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