Noel Clarke Drops Defamation Action Against BAFTA

Zac Ntim

Noel Clarke has dropped his defamation suit against BAFTA, Deadline can report.

The actor-producer filed the suit at London’s High Court in May following the awards body’s sending a letter to its members discussing a bombshell story published by The Guardian in April 2021, in which the Bulletproof and Doctor Who star was accused of various incidents of misconduct between 2004 and 2019.

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He has denied all of the allegations but said he has sought professional help to improve his behavior. BAFTA suspended his membership after the allegations and rescinded the Outstanding Achievement Award it handed him just a week prior to The Guardian article.

The fallout from the report was swift, with Sky canceling Clarke’s series Bulletproof and ITV pulling the final episode of Viewpoint, which he starred in. Both suspended further work with the actor.

Clarke listed 12 defendants in the suit, including BAFTA and The Guardian, as well as Sirin Kale, and Lucy Osborne, who authored the article. Deadline understands action remains against The Guardian but the newspaper has yet to respond to Deadline’s request for comment.

After filing the suit, Clarke had four months to take action but that time has now elapsed and BAFTA’s name along with others has been struck from the suit.

In a statement, a BAFTA Spokesperson said: “We note that Noel Clarke has dropped his legal action against BAFTA. The serious misconduct alleged in first-hand testimonies and published in The Guardian newspaper is contrary to the standards expected of a BAFTA member and the values we uphold as an arts charity and Academy. We stand by our decision to suspend his honorary award and membership as soon as the detailed allegations came to light.”

In March, London’s Metropolitan Police announced that it dropped an investigation into the actor citing a lack of evidence. A statement issued by the police said a “thorough” assessment of the claims had been conducted and that it had “determined the information would not meet the threshold for a criminal investigation.”

Clarke spoke out after the investigation was dropped and criticized the response of the TV industry to the allegations.

“There has been no arrest, no charges, no trial, no verdict but I have been criminalized. This is a form of modern McCarthyism,” he said at the time.

Clarke has recently returned to social media and announced on Twitter that he intends to write a script about his experience of being accused of sexual harassment.

“I am writing a script about all this sh*t,” Clarke tweeted. “I’m 30 pages in, but the PTSD is real.”

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