With any feel-good biopic there’s an implicit meta-epilogue. Not only did the protagonist typically overcome insurmountable odds to create a better life for themselves but they also got a movie as an ode to their strength and resilience. In the case of I Swear, directed by Kirk Jones and based on the life of John Davidson, it not only received critical acclaim but won Best Actor for star Robert Aramayo at this year’s BAFTAS, the most prestigious awards in the British Film Industry—and an awards show where I Swear‘s meta-epilogue would forever change.
The film covers Davidson’s life, from being a young teenager in 1983 Glashiels, Scotland, right up until he receives his OBE (Officer Of The Most Excellent Order Of The British Empire) in 2019 from the Queen for his services as an activist educating institutions around the U.K. on Tourette Syndrome. It’s a moment of great triumph for Davidson, even if his condition means he shouts “Fuck the Queen” as he enters. There’s an understanding of his condition and the involuntary nature of his outburst even in that regal space that would have made the rest of his life infinitely easier; he’s been mercilessly bullied at school by students and teachers alike, brutalized by strangers who misinterpreted his ticks as abuse, and forsaken by parents who all but give up on him. Luckily, a run-in with an old school friend with a mental health nurse mother (Maxine Peake), leads him to find a more supportive home and a newfound family.
I Swear very much fits into the British approach of looking at grim social issues through a comic lens. The U.K. sensibility tends to balk at earnestness, so when confronting dark subject matter (poverty, homophobia, domestic terrorism), some of our most beloved properties include Brassed Off, The Full Monty, Pride, and Four Lions. It speaks to a national populace determined to maintain the stiffest of upper lips, that to speak our pain plainly without a light dose of mockery would be unforgivably uncouth. And as the John Richardson of I Swear regularly admits, Tourettes is a cruel and devastating thing to live with but it can, occasionally, within the right context, be pretty blimmin’ funny.
Humor aside, the true emotional core of the film is how the grown-up Davidson is caught between two irreconcilable impulses: the yearning for an ordinary existence and the grim realisations that “ordinary” is never really on the table. Aramayo plays that contradiction beautifully, giving Davidson the jittery, self-sabotaging energy of a man forever trying to convince himself he might be able to blend in just this once. Of course, every attempt to do so only nudges him closer to disaster. The suspense comes from not knowing what flavor of catastrophe is around the corner: Will it be merely cringe-inducing, like casually telling a prospective employer he ejaculated in the tea? Or will it veer into genuinely alarming territory, like inadvertently provoking the ire of a pack of angry drunks with crowbars? Eventually, we know that Davidson finds himself on the path towards glory (the film begins with him receiving his OBE) but between the British release in October in 2025 and hitting U.S. screens, a far more unfortunate narrative has emerged off-screen.
Davidson was rightly invited to the glitzy BAFTA Awards where I Swear was nominated for five awards, and would win two. I sat in the audience at the back of the balcony alongside many other members of the press, and we were all warned ahead of the ceremony’s commencement that Davidson’s condition meant he was prone to involuntary outbursts and they should be regarded as such. So far, so accommodating. But unlike much of the audience, Davidson was placed near one of the microphones pointed towards the crowd, which are there to pick up laughter and applause to further lend atmosphere to the BBC broadcast which would air two hours later. Things took a turn for the appalling when Sinners‘ Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo took to the stage to present the award for Best Special Visual Effects and Davidson yelled the N-word from the audience.
To be honest, in the vastness of the room, it was not entirely clear what exactly the word that had been shouted was, but thanks to Davidson’s proximity to the stage and to the BBC microphones, it was loud and clear to both the two presenters and the viewers at home watching two hours later—despite many other utterances and even a speech ending “Free Palestine” being meticulously edited out. Hell, I’d been there the year before when one of the presenters’ trousers fell down, exposing his underwear as he was announcing the nominations, and not a moment of that made it to TV.
This means that now, with I Swear finally coming out in the U.S., it’s being released under a chaotic cloud of ableism, racism, and failed broadcasting standards. After meticulously poring over the BBC guidelines, it was clear this incident was not just a case of failing to safeguard individuals, but one that broke many of the BBC’s own long-established rules, most clearly that it was broadcast “pre-watershed,” a term meaning that in the U.K. adult content can only be legally broadcast after 9 p.m. The BAFTA debacle not only makes your heart break for Jordan and Lindo, but it has forever shaded the depressing postscript of I Swear.
The film seeks to inspire its audience, positing that Davidson has a potential bright future ahead—that the world is slowly but surely learning more about Tourettes and making a larger investment in promising medical research that alleviates its symptoms. Instead, many lines from the film—like when his mother figure reassures him that “If you do something you can’t help, you never have to apologize for it”—now feel like cruel foreshadowing for the BAFTA incident and its fallout. In reality, the internet called for blood, claiming that Davidson’s apology was insufficient and suggesting that his outburst was actually a vocalization of an underlying bigotry. In fact, with Tourettes, what you vocalize is often what you wish to say the least. It harkens back to a line that Davidson’s mentor in the film calmly explains to him, that “The problem is not Tourettes, the problem is people don’t know enough about Tourettes.”
The woefully slow speed with which the BBC responded to the crisis (the ceremony was available to watch on its streaming service, complete with slurs, for 14 hours after the broadcast, long after the outrage had begun) not only did a disservice to Lindo and Jordan, whose reactions became punchlines in the most racist cesspits of social media, but to Davidson himself, who saw much of his life’s work disintegrate into a handful of dust. The most high-profile moment in his legacy is one of deep sadness for a multitude of people, and led to many treating Tourettes with more disdain and contempt. But despite the other famous British ethos of “never complain, never explain,” Davidson did explain. He reportedly reached out privately, as well as released a public statement which explained that he is “deeply mortified if anyone considers my involuntary tics to be intentional or to carry any meaning.” He added, “Whilst I will never apologize for having Tourette syndrome, I will apologize for any pain, upset and misunderstanding that it may create.”
There’s no way to quantify how violent that language felt to all the Black people in the room and watching at home. But for those with Tourettes, or other disabilities (my own neurodiversity comes with frequent verbal stimming, though it has never tipped into the coprolalia that proves such a challenge for those with Tourettes), I Swear has come to represent an uncomfortable intersection where a plethora of people have been dehumanized. And while that may make those in the U.S. hesitant to watch the film, seeing it and digesting the events that followed has become more important than ever. Understanding Davidson’s condition doesn’t diminish the pain of the Black community hearing those words, but it’s a beautifully directed, sensitively acted tale that, in true British fashion, regularly rejects earnestness in favor of dark comedy. And even then, especially in light of this unfortunate aftermath, the stiffest upper lip in the world couldn’t help but quiver when contemplating the pain this syndrome continues to inflict upon so many.
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