Nick Frost Jokes as Paapa Essiedu Calls Him Hagrid at BAFTA TV Awards

nick frost got a live introduction at the BAFTA TV Awards that doubled as a cast tease. Paapa Essiedu repeatedly called him “Hagrid” while the pair presented the Supporting Actress award to Christine Tremarco at London’s Royal Festival Hall on Sunday afternoon.

Essiedu and Frost are both attached to the upcoming HBO Harry Potter series, where Essiedu is playing Severus Snape and Frost is set to play Rubeus Hagrid. The show has already been recommissioned for a second season before the first season airs, so a brief awards-stage appearance carried more weight than a standard presenter slot.

Royal Festival Hall Stage

Essiedu opened the introduction with, “Some truly exceptional performances, let’s take a look at the nominees Hagrid,” then kept using the nickname as he moved through the category. Frost answered in kind: “My name is Nick,” he said, before adding, “I sat next to you at the friggin’ readthrough.”

The exchange put two major names from the series in front of a BAFTA TV Awards audience at a point when the franchise is already under scrutiny for how its new cast is being launched. Essiedu has previously said he faced a number of racist death threats since joining the franchise, and that backdrop makes even a light joke onstage part of a much bigger public rollout.

Christine Tremarco Award

The actual prize went to Christine Tremarco, the Adolescence star who took Supporting Actress. That keeps the night anchored in the awards race, but the presenter pairing became the talking point because it delivered a first public glimpse of the new Harry Potter screen team in a formal setting.

Later in the ceremony, Lox Pratt, who is playing Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter, presented two children’s TV Awards. With the series still ahead of its first season, these live appearances are doing early promotional work: they introduce the cast, test the tone, and show how the production wants to be seen before the show reaches screens.