The West Side Story star kicked off the awards show on Sunday night with a spirited medley of Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves and We Are Family.
It then segued into an original rap verse highlighting the female nominees, which has since gone viral.
At one point, she rapped: ‘Angela Bassett did the thing, Viola Davis my ‘Woman King,’ Blanchett Cate you’re a genius, Jamie Lee you are all of us.’
Now, the 32-year-old is no longer on Twitter after she was attacked over the routine, with the link to her profile, tagged by Bafta’s official account, resulting in a ‘this account doesn’t exist’ message.
Online naysayers had branded the rap section in particular ‘painful’, with one tweeting: ‘This has unlocked a whole new level of cringe for me. Like I can’t. I need a day off to recover.’
Another added: ‘Ariana DeBose you’re an Oscar winner, you don’t have to do, this I promise.’
However, others defended the performer, and laid the blame squarely with the lyrics.
‘Look Ariana DeBose did the best she could with the material, but who the hell wrote that song? Because jail, immediately,’ argued one viewer.
Now a Bafta producer has come to her defence and branded the criticism ‘incredibly unfair’.
In a statement to Variety, Nick Bullen, who is CEO of Spun Gold, the production company responsible for mounting the show, insisted that everybody in the room ‘loved it’.
‘The songs she was singing are very familiar songs, the room was clapping, and people were sort of dancing to the music.
‘That rap section in the middle, mentioning the women in the room, was because it’s been a great year for women in film, and we wanted to celebrate that.’
He contended that a large amount of the backlash is because ‘a lot of people don’t like change’, while he added that DeBose ‘worked with a great musical director and choreographer’ on the performance.
Bullen added: ‘There’s a view that the Baftas have to be this slightly stiff, traditional British, middle-England messaging.’
He pointed to the way ‘American awards shows have much more razzmatazz, much more showbiz and perhaps a broader range of people being involved’.
He explained: ‘We felt we’re not about revolution, we’re about evolution. Let’s just evolve, let’s just move forward with some gentle changes that start to lay out the stall of what this show should be and where we should be with it.’
DeBose was last year’s best supporting actress Bafta winner for her turn as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s film version of West Side Story, while she was also nominated for the EE Rising Star award.
She later scooped the Academy Award for her performance too.
Although she has deactivated her Twitter account, DeBose is yet to publicly address her performance.
Metro.co.uk has contacted reps for Ariana DeBose for comment.
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