Tough crowd.
“KPop Demon Hunters” star Ejae revealed that Leonardo DiCaprio threw off her 2026 BAFTA Awards performance.
“The BAFTAs haunt me,” the singer told the Times in an interview published Thursday. “I made mistakes. I cracked a little bit on the high notes. Leonardo DiCaprio was [in the audience] right in front of me, and he was not smiling.”
Ejae recalled looking directly at the legendary actor right as she sang one of the highest notes in her Oscar-winning song, “Golden.”
“That’s what put me off,” she recalled. “He made me so nervous. It was already so nerve-racking to be in front of all these celebrities, and then I look up and lock eyes with Leonardo DiCaprio? Come on.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Ejae recounted crossing paths with one of the music industry’s biggest power couples, Beyoncé and Jay-Z.
“I was at their afterparty and Jay-Z came up to me and said, ‘Hi, my name’s Shawn,’” she shared.
“I was beyond starstruck. Beyoncé is my idol and she said, ‘You have an incredible voice.’ I asked her, ‘Do you know ‘Golden?’ She was like, ‘Yeah, my girls sing it.’”
Ejae wrote “Golden” alongside Mark Sonnenblick as well as several other songs that appear in “KPop Demon Hunters.”
She also starred as the singing voice for Rumi, a member of fictional K-pop group HUNTR/X that lead secret double lives as martial arts-trained demon hunters in the film.
Despite Ejae’s nerve-wracking performance of “Golden” at the BAFTAs, the song swept the 2026 awards season.
The hit won the Oscar for Best Original Song, and brought the trio, which also includes Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami, to the Brit Awards, Golden Globes, Grammys and more.
