{"id":118212,"date":"2026-08-13T14:05:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T14:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/118212\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T14:05:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T14:05:19","slug":"k-pop-demon-hunters-star-says-leonardo-dicaprios-neutral-face-put-her-off-baftas-performance-he-was-not-smiling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/118212\/","title":{"rendered":"K-Pop Demon Hunters star says Leonardo DiCaprio\u2019s neutral face put her off Baftas performance: \u2018He was not smiling\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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K-Pop Demon Hunters <\/a>star Ejae has admitted she feels \u201chaunted\u201d by her performance at the Baftas<\/a> earlier this year \u2013 claiming a poker-faced A-lister unwittingly put her off. <\/p>\n

Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami \u2013 who provided the singing voices for the HUNTR\/X girl group in Netflix\u2019s animated film \u2013 performed the movie\u2019s hit track \u201cGolden\u201d for the star-studded audience at the London ceremony in February. <\/p>\n

But Ejae, real name Kim Eun-jae, has now confessed that she wasn\u2019t too pleased with her own vocals, telling The Times<\/a>: \u201cThe Batas haunt me. I made mistakes. I cracked a little bit on the high notes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Explaining what happened, the 34-year-old continued: \u201cLeonardo DiCaprio<\/a> was [in the audience] right in front of me, and he was not smiling.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ejae added that as she was singing one of the song\u2019s highest notes, she looked directly at the One Battle After Another actor. <\/p>\n

\"ItIt was the first time the trio were performing \u2018Golden\u2019 outside the US (Bafta\/YouTube)<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what put me off,\u201d she said. \u201cHe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both the HUNTR\/X singers and Titanic star DiCaprio were fixtures on the awards season circuit this year. <\/p>\n

Released in 2025, K-Pop Demon Hunters fast became the most-watched film in Netflix\u2019s history<\/a>, amassing over 325 million official views, according to the streaming service. It followed up the astonishing viewing figures with plenty of accolades and Netflix has confirmed that a sequel is on the way<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\"DiCaprioDiCaprio at the Baftas (Getty)<\/p>\n

While K-Pop Demon Hunters was deemed ineligible for the Baftas because it wasn\u2019t released in cinemas, it was named Best Animated Film at the Golden Globes<\/a>, with \u201cGolden\u201d \u2013 co-written by Ejae \u2013 winning Best Original Song from a Motion Picture. <\/p>\n

The film and its songwriters walked away with the same accolades at the Oscars<\/a>, where Ejae also got a second chance at performing in front of Leo. That time around, things went a little better and the 51-year-old actor was even spotted waving a K-Pop lightstick as he stood to applaud. <\/p>\n

DiCaprio\u2019s star turn as Bob Ferguson in Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s acclaimed thriller One Battle After Another resulted in best actor nominations at all of this year\u2019s major award ceremonies.<\/p>\n

\"EjaeEjae with her Academy Award (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

The actor didn\u2019t manage to get his hands on any major statuettes, though, with Robert Arayamo (I Swear) pipping him to the post at the Baftas, before Michael B Jordan (Sinners) was victorious at the Oscars. <\/p>\n

The Golden Globes splits its acting awards into Drama, and Musical or Comedy categories, with DiCaprio\u2019s performance submitted in the latter. On the night, he lost out to Marty Supreme\u2019s Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61127,61123,11914,26886,61125,11912,19990,14729,11911,8695,195,59197,42023,7482,61126,61124,9698],"class_list":["post-118212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-79th-british-academy-film-awards","tag-arrival","tag-arts-culture-and-entertainment","tag-award","tag-awards-ceremony","tag-celebrities","tag-color-image","tag-england","tag-film-industry","tag-horizontal","tag-k-pop","tag-leonardo-dicaprio","tag-london-england","tag-photography","tag-red-carpet-event","tag-royal-festival-hall","tag-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}