While a dominant delegation from “The Kings Speech” was a given, a plethora of actor, producer, director, and executive talent from all the leading contenders lit up BAFTA LA’s Award Season Tea Party at the Four Seasons on Saturday afternoon. With HBO’s Luxury Lounge and InStyle’s suite taking place on the upper floors, it was an awards weekend mecca on Doheny.
In the ballroom, Nicole Kidman kept a tight circle with host and chairman Nigel Lythgoe and Diane Warren.
Amidst Ben Affleck, Jeff Bridges, and Mark Ruffalo, “Blue Valentine” writer-director Derek Cianfrance told TheWRAP, “I spent 12 years trying to make this movie….It’s nice for me to know that I wasn’t so crazy. Now audiences are out there buying tickets for the movie. It’s actually alive. I feel like my kid just went off to college or something.”
After winning the Critics Choice award for Best Original Screenplay on Friday night, “The Kings Speech” writer David Seidler admitted that during this awards cycle “(“The Social Network” writer) Aaron Sorkin and I have become the best of buddies.” After a lot of “jokes and teasing” over email, the two met for the first time at Friday night’s show, where both went home winners in separate original and adapted writing categories.
For “The King’s Speech”, the turnout was royal . Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter spent time with Director Tom Hooper, who warmly embraced both the Jeremy Renner (wearing sunglasses) and Guy Pearce when he saw them arrive. Geoffrey Rush sipped water outside on the warm afternoon, while three or four people provided human coattails wherever Harvey Weinstein shuttled through the Four Seasons.
Hooper said “The best thing (about awards season) is the people you get to meet. As a director, we’re all kept away from each other as little islands. To get to know Darren, to get to know the two Davids (Fincher and Russell), to get to know Peter Weir back in Telluride, that’s the greatest thrill…Steven Spielberg last night.”
In addition to the mini-sandwiches and deviled eggs, it wouldn’t be authentically English without gin. Andrew Garfield hosted an overcrowded table of younger attendees next to one of the multiple Bombay Sapphire bars spread across the ballroom. The future Spiderman’s cocktail table was so crowded that his friends were sitting on each other’s laps.
A year ago to the moment, it was far from a celebratory tone for “127 Hours” writer Simon Beaufoy. Beaufoy told TheWRAP that during the BAFTA tea on the Saturday before the Golden Globes a year ago, he was meeting with director-producer Danny Boyle, producer Christian Colson, James Franco, and hiker Aron Ralston upstairs in a hotel room as Ralston shared his immensely personal video footage from his entrapment for the first time.
While Beaufoy had written an early draft, the script that became awards contender “127 Hours” had not even been written yet.
