Ariana Debose BAFTA Rap / "Angela Bassett Did The Thing"

About

Ariana Debose BAFTA Rap refers to a viral video of actress Ariana Debose performing a song celebrating the actresses present at the 2023 British Academy of Film and Television Awards (BAFTA). Following the event in mid-February 2023, many found her rap and lyrics (which notably includes the widely reposted line "Angela Bassett did the thing") cringeworthy, leading to jokes, memes and parodies online.

Origin

On February 19th, 2023, Ariana Debose hosted the 76th annual BAFTA awards. At the start of the ceremony, she performed an original rap celebrating some of the nominated actresses in attendance. The clip was tweeted by the BAFTA Twitter account that evening, gaining over 3.9 million views in four days.^[1]

Sisters are doing it for themselves! The incredible @ArianaDeBose opens the 2023 #EEBAFTAs with an iconic performance! ✨ pic.twitter.com/G9YgKN2e1t

— BAFTA (@BAFTA) February 19, 2023

Spread

The clip was quickly deemed cringeworthy by many online commenters, who took to joking about it as soon as it aired. For example, that same night on February 19th, 2023, Twitter user @danielleloucamp^[2] commented, "this is why bullying musical theatre kids is important," gaining over 640 likes in two days (shown below, left). Also that day, user @ThatJakePC^[3] joked, "Celebs have been protected too long from the experience of someone waiting until the subway doors close to start reciting their poetry," gaining over 60 likes in the same timeframe (shown below, right).

The clip spread widely on TikTok as well, specifically the portion of the song starting with "Angela Bassett did the thing." As of February 22nd, there are over 600,000 videos under the hashtag "#AngelaBassettDidTheThing."^[4] Prominent videos poking fun at Debose's performance include a post by TikToker bruja.rita that gained over 7,900 likes in one day (shown below, left). User apat100 posted a video about the lyric getting stuck in his head also on February 21st, gaining over 17,000 likes in one day (shown below, right).

Ariana Debose deleted her Twitter account after the performance,^[5] which received mixed reviews from the press. The Guardian^[6] notably published a lengthy, tongue-in-cheek breakdown of the entire performance. BAFTA producer Nick Bullen then defended the performance and called reactions to it "incredibly unfair."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References