Manchester-raised actress Wunmi Mosaku was one of the well-deserved winners at the 2026 BAFTA Film Awards last night.
Born in the Nigerian city of Zaria to Yoruba parents, Oluwunmi Olapeju Mosaku – known professionally as Wunmi Mosaku – moved to England when she was just a year old, and settled in the Manchester community of Hulme, going on to be educated at Trinity Church of England High School and Xaverian Sixth Form College, before heading off to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London to study acting.
The 39-year-old has been a celebrated actor of the screen for nearly 20 years this year, with some of her most notable roles being in TV series like Vera, Luther, and Lovecraft Country, as well as being a member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
But it was for her role as Annie Ryan Coogler’s 2025 hit horror film Sinners that has truly become one of her breakout roles – a role she won the Best Supporting Actress award for at last night’s BAFTAs.
Wunmi was already a BAFTA TV Award winner or her role as Gloria Taylor in the 2016 TV film Damilola, Our Loved Boy, but this was her first win on the Film side, and it was a win that has turned the Best Supporting Actress ‘Oscar race’ into one of the more up-in-the-air categories this Awards Season.
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Taking to the stage to accept the award, Wunmi thanked her family, her fellow nominees and co-stars, director, and wider team, as well as explaining what the role of Annie meant to her.
“I found a part of myself in Annie,” she said in her speech. “A part of my hopes, my ancestral power, and connection, parts I thought I had lost or tried to dim as an immigrant trying to fit in. Through her, I deepened my belief in my potential, my capacity to love and hope in the darkest moments of grief.”
Wunmi’s win wasn’t considered the only ‘surprise’ win of the night in the major acting categories either – nor was it the only major win for a northern actor – as the Best Actor in a Leading Role award went to Hull-born actor Robert Aramayo for his role in the 2025 biographical drama film, I Swear, based on the true life story of John Davidson – a Scottish man with severe Tourette’s syndrome, and follows his life at a time when his condition was barely identifiable.
Robert’s win was considered so ‘surprising’ by many given the fact he is not nominated for any of the other major televised award ceremonies this year – including the Oscars – with the two main frontrunners of the season being heavy-hitters being Timothée Chalamet and Leonardo Dicaprio.
Aramayo also took home the EE Rising Star Award, which is voted on for by the British public.
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Sean Penn was another shock – but again, well-deserved – winner of the night, taking home Best Supporting Actor for One Battle After Another, with his win being similar to Wunmi’s in that he is the third winner of the Best Supporting Actor category so far this season.
Elsewhere in the ceremony, some of the other big winners of the night were One Battle After Another, which scooped Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director for Paul Thomas Anderson, among others, while Hamnet took Best British Film, and the film’s lead Jessie Buckley won Best Actress in Leading Role – with the latter being, arguably, the only expected and predicted acting win of the night.
Sir Ian McKellen pays emotional tribute to long-time friend and fellow northern actor Sir Patrick Stewart
Emily Sergeant
Sir Ian McKellen has paid an emotional tribute to his long-time friend and fellow northern actor, Sir Patrick Stewart, following his death.
Sir Patrick Stewart – who was born and bred in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, and is best-known for his theatre work alongside an illustrious 60-year screen career, taking on prominent roles in franchises such as Star Trek and X-Men – sadly passed away at the age of 86, with his death being announced publicly yesterday evening (29 October).
And now, his long-time friend and fellow northern actor, Sir Ian McKellen, has paid tribute.
Sir Patrick and Sir Ian shared the stage together countless times over their decades-long careers, but also famously starred alongside each other in the X-Men franchise, and subsequent Marvel movies, as Charles Xavier/Professor X and Magneto.
The tribute, shared across Sir Ian’s social media platforms, reads: “Before everything else, Patrick was defined by being born and bred in Yorkshire, the proud county in the north of England which he loved to the end. You could hear it in his accented voice and in the stern honesty with which he told you what he thought and felt. Yorkshiremen have no truck with half-truths or avoidance of big issues. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.
“We first met as ambitious young actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company half a century ago but we weren’t in the same productions.
“My first strong memory was a few years later, meeting him in the street in central London when he told me about an offer to take over a leading part in ‘Star Trek’. “But Patrick think of your stage career in the UK. Do you really want to risk getting lost in Hollywood for years and years?”
“Well, he took the risk and thank goodness for us all that he did, for not just his devoted Trekkies, but film and theatre audiences who marvelled at his using international celebrity to star in a string of cinema successes (‘X-Men’ of course) and in great classical plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Pinter and Beckett at Stratford-upon-Avon, in London’s West End and on Broadway.
“America was his adopted home, where he met his adored Sunny who has cared for him through sickness and health, through thick and thin.
“But he never forsook his origins: and the proudest achievement of the most respected and beloved actor of his generation on either side of the Atlantic, was his appointment as Chancellor of Huddersfield University in Yorkshire.”
Sir Patrick Stewart’s farewell performance will be in Avengers: Doomsday, which is being released in UK cinemas on 18 December 2026
Featured Image – Gage Skidmore (via Flickr)
TV & Showbiz
James Acaster reveals eerie song all Traitors contestants are forced to listen to before every roundtable
Emily Sergeant
James Acaster has revealed the eerie (and pretty surprising) song that all Traitors contestants are forced to listen to before every roundtable.
In case you’ve been living comfortably under a rock, you’ll probably be aware that comedian James Acaster is currently a contestant on this current season of BBC‘s smash-hit reality TV competition show, The Celebrity Traitors – a show that viewers in their millions are tuning into each week, with some big names on the cast.
Acaster is currently (spoiler alert… but it shouldn’t be at this point, we are several weeks in after all) one of three Traitors competing on the show, and he’s doing a pretty good job at it.
But we wonder how much of his success can be put down to the producers’ love of a certain song they like to play before every roundtable? Probably next to none, but it’s surprising to find out how much of an integral role the tune plays though.
The song we’re referring to here, it has been revealed, is ‘The Hanging Tree’ – a folk ballad made popular by The Hunger Games.
‘The Hanging Tree’, composed by James Newton Howard and Suzanne Collins, was famously sung by Jennifer Lawrence’s character Katniss Everdeen in the third instalment of the film franchise, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1.
The lyrics are as follows:
Are you, are you Coming to the tree Where they strung up a man They say who murdered three? Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met at midnight In the hanging tree
So, as you can see, the song does make reference to ‘murder’, which is a key part of The Traitors game (not real murder, of course), but even with that context, we’re still not sure why the producers are keen to play it out before every roundtable.
During a viral TikTok clip from an on-stage Q&A this week, Acaster revealed the song’s usage to the audience: “You all walk in silence down the corridor, and you all sit down, and they don’t announce it’s gonna happen.
“The first time this will completely blindside you, but they do it every single roundtable. They play that song from The Hunger Games, that ‘coming to the tree’ song. Like acapella, Jennifer Lawrence.”
He continued: “It was every f***ing time, it was the only song we heard the whole time we were in there, and all day I would have it in my head constantly, everyone would, I’d go ‘have you got coming to the tree in your head?’ and they’d go ‘yes, it’s in my head, again’.”
Viewers who watch the show may have spotted the song being played in the background or transition between certain scenes, but now it’s been revealed that the contestants hear it too.
Who would’ve thought?
Featured Image – Euan Cherry / BBC / Studio Lambert
Emily Sergeant -
23rd February 2026 
