Ariana DeBose Teases BAFTA Rap Replay at Upcoming London Gig
Ariana DeBose is ready to do the thing again. The Oscar-winner, who is set to play a one-off gig at the London Palladium in the U.K. next month, has said she might open her concert with her controversial BAFTA awards rap.
“[The show] allows you to get to know me so I might be spilling a little tea, maybe I’ll be talking about some experiences I had during awards season,” she teased during a pre-recorded segment on Zoe Ball’s BBC radio show on Monday morning. “Who knows, I might even open the show with the BAFTA rap because you know you want to hear it again.”
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DeBose is set to play the Palladium in London on April 1. (“And that is not a joke, I know there are many reasons you might think it’s a joke, it’s not,” DeBose laughingly said of the show’s date).
Earlier in the interview, DeBose spoke briefly about her experience at the BAFTA Awards, telling Ball she’d spent the night partying with Emma Thompson and getting compliments on her performance from Baz Luhrmann. “I’m not gonna lie, I had a blast,” DeBose said. “It was so awesome and then I spent the rest of the night cutting a rug […] with like Emma Thompson. It was fabulous. I had a great time. Baz Luhrmann came and found me and he was like, ‘I think you’re great, that was fun, I had fun,’ and I was like, ‘Work! That’s a win, you guys.’ And apparently gay Twitter seemed to like it.
“Honestly it’s not like I was like, ‘Hey BAFTA let me in,'” DeBose explained of how she came to perform at the ceremony on Feb. 19. “They called me, believe it or not. But that was the assignment. ‘Come, celebrate women.’ And I was like, absolutely. And we did that and it was fun.”
Of her upcoming concert at the Palladium, DeBose promised a “mash-up” of different styles and musicians, including Stephen Sondheim, Judy Garland, Gladys Knight, Madonna and Cher.
“I don’t know if I even have any business playing the Palladium but I do things that scare me every day and I’m going to do it again April 1,” she said.
Angela Bassett, who was memorably namechecked in DeBose’s rap, told Variety she had sent DeBose a message over the weekend to see how she was holding up. “I DM’d her last night. I did. It was beautiful,” Bassett said at the NAACP Image Awards red carpet on Saturday evening. “I just wanted to make sure she was okay because, you know, it’s a lot of attention. And she is A-Okay.”
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