Ted Lasso actor demands gender neutral acting awards

On Thursday, Ted Lasso actor Toheeb Jimoh announced the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) Film nominations with actress Hayley Atwell and took the opportunity to say that in the future acting award categories should be genderless.

"I mean, I don't really understand why they are separate. I used to have this conversation with my friends when I was younger. I think, of course, if it makes people feel more included then absolutely."

Jimoh said, "like, how do you compare Viola Davis's work to Cate Blanchett's work, and so, like, by that same token, how do you compare Viola Davis's work to, you know, Michael Ward's, or to anyone? I think it's really hard to compare actors to each other. So the fact that they're split gender wise doesn't really make sense to me." 

"Existing like this has to be utterly exhausting," one user wrote on Twitter.

Another wrote, "That's gone so well with the music awards - men won everything."

The Grammy's removed their gender-based categories in 2011. As the Los Angeles Times reports, "A total of 90.7 percent of nominees between 2013 and 2018 were male, meaning just 9.3% were women."

"So to answer your question, yeah. Why not? I think it'd be pretty dope," Jimoh said of erasing the gender categories.

As Variety reports, "The idea of non-gendered awards shows began to pick up steam when the MTV Movie & TV Awards dropped gender-specific categories in 2017." In 2021, the Emmys started allowing for a non-gendered "Performer" label for nominees who don't want "Actor" or "Actress" written on their award statues and certificates.

Another Twitter user pointed out that the Ted Lasso actor made the comment about comparing actors at an acting awards event: "if 'it's really hard to compare actors to each other', why is he involved in the awards' process generally? isn't the whole point to ... uh ... compare actors to each other?"