Britain’s Got Talent judge David Walliams has been accused of making “derogatory and sexually explicit remarks” about contestants on the talent show.
According to an exposé in The Guardian, Walliams — one of the U.K.’s best-known TV personalities and a hugely successful children’s author — was heard in a recording of one episode of the show repeatedly calling one contestant the C-word and saying that another “thinks you want to f— her.”
According to the report, the comments were made during an audition show filmed at the London Palladium in January 2020 and had been picked up by microphones used to record conversations between the judges, for which the paper then saw the transcript.
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Lawyers for Walliams and Thames TV, which produces Britain’s Got Talent, told The Guardian that the comments were part of a private conversation never intended for broadcast.
In one incident, the transcript claimed that Walliams described an older performer — after he had failed an audition and made a joke about the judge — as “a c—” three times. In another, after a female contestant walked offstage, Walliams described her as being “like the slightly boring girl you meet in the pub that thinks you want to f— them, but you don’t,” according to the transcript.
In a statement, Walliams said: “I would like to apologize to the people I made disrespectful comments about during breaks in filming for Britain’s Got Talent in 2020. These were private conversations and — like most conversations with friends — were never intended to be shared. Nevertheless, I am sorry.”
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.