All the major LGBTQ+ wins and losses at the BAFTAs 2025, from Wicked to Will & Harper

The BAFTA Film Awards are over for another year and as ever, the 2025 ceremony came with some surprises. Anora‘s Mikey Madison won Best Actress, Conclave won Best Film, and David Jonsson took home the Rising Star gong.

Yet there were also some fairly expected results, too: Zoë Saldaña took home Best Supporting Actress, as she did at the Golden Globes, Kieran Culkin took home the Best Supporting Actor award for A Real Pain, and Adrien Brody won Best Actor for The Brutalist.

With a fair few LGBTQ+ nods – pretty much the entire cast of Wicked are LGBTQ+, while one of the most-nominated films, Emilia Pérez, is about a transgender cartel boss – the BAFTAs had the potential to be very queer indeed. But how queer did it end up being? Let’s break it down.

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Loss: Will & Harper

Will Ferrell and Harper Steele’s feature-length Netflix documentary Will & Harper was nominated in the Best Documentary category, but lost out to Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. The adored doc followed Ferrell and his best friend of 30 years, Steele, on a cross-country road trip, exploring their friendship following Steele’s revelation that she is living as a trans woman. At least it got a nod at the BAFTAs – the Oscars left it out in the cold.

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Win – sort of: Emilia Pérez

Jacques Audiard’s controversial Spanish-language musical crime thriller Emilia Pérez tells the story of the titular transgender former cartel boss (Karla Sofía Gascón, the first trans woman nominated for an acting BAFTA) who fakes her own death to access gender-affirming surgery. It was the second most-nominated film of the night, with 11 nominations, but eventually scored just two, one for Zoë Saldaña for Best Supporting Actress and one for Best Film not in the English language. Yet it may have scored more, had its lead actress Gascón not embroiled the film in a wave controversy, after unearthed old tweets showed her expressing anti-Islam and anti-diversity sentiment.

One of the night’s best moments, though, came when Saldaña sweetly dedicated her award to her trans nephew, and pledged to stand by the trans community always.

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Loss: Cynthia Erivo

Queer Wicked star Cynthia Erivo was nominated in the Best Actress category for her role in the Jon M Chu epic musical adaptation, but lost out to Anora actress and rising star Mikey Madison. Erivo, who was sat at the 2025 BAFTAs ceremony next to her partner, actress and producer Lena Waithe, would have become the first Black woman to win in the category.

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Loss: Colman Domingo

Gay actor Colman Domingo was nominated as Best Actor for his role in the prison drama Sing Sing, which is based on the real life Rehabilitation Through the Arts programme at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York. Domingo lost out to The Brutalist star Adrien Brody, who was hotly anticipated to take home the accolade. 

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Loss: Love Lies Bleeding

Rose Glass’s sapphic bodybuilding thriller film Love Lies Bleeding was seen by many as one of 2024’s most underrated movies, failing to bag a single Oscar nomination, and its leading stars – Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian – missing out on most major accolades. Yet the BAFTAs nominated it in the Outstanding British Film award category, alongside some heavy hitters including Gladiator II and Conclave. It was the latter that ultimately bagged the win. 

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Win – sort of:Wicked

Wicked did manage to take home two of the seven awards it was nominated for, Best Costume Design and Best Production Design. Yet the year-defining musical film lost out on the biggest awards it was vying for, including Best Film, Best Actress for Cynthia Erivo, and Best Supporting Actress for Ariana Grande. Whether it’s a big queer win or a big queer snub then, we’ll leave for you to decide.

The BAFTAs are available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

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