David Tennant shares key to hosting the Baftas

This weekend, David Tennant will take to the 2025 Bafta Film Awards stage as host for the second year in a row. After a knockout debut last year, the pressure could be on, but he’s making sure the jitters don’t get the best of him.

"I want to keep the expectations as low as possible," he tells Yahoo UK ahead of the ceremony. However, that might be easier said than done considering how triumphantly his first hosting duties went down in 2024.

From kicking off the night in a bedazzled kilt to getting a few worthy spars in with his theatrical frenemy Michael Sheen and hopping on a Zoom call with Dame Judi Dench and Tom Hiddleston for an opening sketch, there was little concern that he was going to be a one-and-done host destined to be banished as a footnote on Wikipedia.

"I sort of had to say 'yes' to the second one just to prove that I hadn't mucked up the first time," Tennant says about his motivation to jump on board as emcee this year. "I probably won't do it again. I think if I can do it twice and get away with it, I should gently [step away]." We’re sure hosts like Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross who ended up with esteemed tenures gave themselves similar arbitrary cut-off points as well.

In terms of nerves, Tennant says, at this point, he’s feeling relatively calm. "I think it balances out, actually. There is a bit more expectation having done it once and not broken it. But then there's also slightly less anxiety because I kind of know what it is, so I think it's a zero-sum." One thing that’s helped him quell the anxiety is taking the very non-actor approach of decentering himself.

"At a certain point, it's not about you," he says. "I think once you realise that it’s actually quite a good anxiety lightener because once you're into the awards, all you're doing is just moving it along. And that's quite useful to acknowledge because otherwise, you can spend three hours with a knot in your stomach."

This year, Tennant will be overseeing a contentious battle for awards victory, one that feels thematically fitting to the film leading the pack in nominations, the papal drama Conclave. Trailing behind the Ralph Fiennes-starring vehicle, which has 12 nominations to its name, is Emilia Peréz, one of the most contentious movies of the season, with 11 noms.

The Netflix musical about the transgender head of a Mexican cartel, which stars Supporting Actress frontrunner Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez, has been one of the more divisive releases of the year thanks to criticism from Mexican and LGBTQ+ viewers.

Although it’s led the pack in almost all of the pre-Oscar award shows, recent controversy concerning tweets by its lead actress Karla Sofía Gascón has soured its chance at awards glory. Also in the running is the Adrien Brody-starring The Brutalist and Timothée Chalamet’s long-awaited Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.

While there’s certainly plenty of drama to dig into, Tennant says ribbing nominees and A-list celebrities from the stage isn’t something that comes easily to him.

"I don't like living there," he says. "Because these are all people that I think are rather brilliant. There was a joke about Cate Blanchett last year, it was meant absolutely, with generosity and kindness. But I saw her in the front row. I think she turned to Prince William appalled and I wanted to stop and go, ‘Cate, you know I think you're brilliant’. And I never got to see her to check."

One unprecedented byproduct of Tennant’s opening speech last year is that he inadvertently predicted that Donald Trump would end up becoming America’s next president thanks to a joke about 2024’s Poor Things.

"When a child’s brain is put in an adult’s body and later this year one of those might be elected president," he said to the crowd. With those apparent powers in mind, does he plan on manifesting anything else into the universe for the year ahead?

"Just that we turn the world in a slightly nicer way," he says.

The EE Bafta Film Awards 2025 will take place on Sunday, 16 February, 2025, and the ceremony will be broadcast from 7pm on BBC One from the iconic Royal Festival Hall.