Mark Hamill recalls his pants falling down on stage at the 2025 BAFTAs

Mark Hamill will never forget presenting at the 2025 BAFTA Film Awards — but not for the reason you’d expect on such a dazzling night of glitz and glamour.

The Life of Chuck star is recalling his shocking onstage wardrobe malfunction when he was preparing to deliver the statue for Best Film to Conclave director Edward Berger.

In a video played on Thursday’s episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Hamill is shown giving his opening monologue declaring his love for film when a nervous expression crosses his face. The actor then quickly reaches down to grab his pants as they fall to his knees behind the podium, continuing to read from the teleprompter without a hitch.

“Smooth as silk,” Colbert teased Hamill as the clip ended and the Star Wars actor covered his face in embarrassment. “Mark Hamill, just take us on a play-by-play, blow-by-blow here. Had you recently started Ozempic or something? Why were your pants falling down?”

Calling the experience “every actor’s nightmare,” Hamill explained that he had tried on the pants twice before that night. “Once at the house in California, and [my stylist] fitted them and said, ‘How are they?’ And I said, ‘Fine. A little snug, but they will do. You could let them out a skosh.'”

He continued, addressing the audience, “Cut to us in London, the car outside, 20 minutes before we are supposed to leave. I put the pants on — he let them out four or five inches! Luckily, our dresser Mary had a safety pin and she pinned them in the back, so I thought I was good to go.”

Hamill was not good to go.

“They introduced me, and as I start walking to the podium, I feel the pin pop,” he recalled. “And every step I took, they slipped lower and lower and lower. I’m not kidding you, they were at my knees by the time I got to the podium!”

Hamill added that when production cut to show clips of the nominees, he frantically looked around to find his wife. Instead, he said, “My eyes landed on Demi Moore.”

When the actor mouthed to Moore asking if she had seen his pants drop, her response was… an enthusiastic thumbs-up — which was certainly more support than Hamill was getting from his trousers.

“I just willed myself, like hypnosis. I was trying to beam into their eyes, ‘You did not see my pants fall down. It’s all an illusion,'” Hamill recounted. “I stuck to the teleprompter and didn’t acknowledge it. I didn’t want to make a joke or bring any attention to it.”

According to the awards show’s director, only audience members from the side could see Hamill’s wardrobe slip because the podium prevented anyone from seeing anything from the front. And while the experience was undoubtedly a very awkward one, it did earn Hamill the respect of his fellow actors Timothée Chalamet and Ed Norton.

“[They] came up to me at the after-party and said, ‘Dude, that was a master class in professionalism,'” Hamill told Colbert.

While Hamill hadn’t commented on the incident until his late night appearance, Colbert had reported on the wardrobe malfunction during the “Meanwhile…” segment of his Feb. 21 episode.

“The man’s pants straight-up fall down, but he keeps rockin’ that prompter without missing a word! The force is strong with this one,” Colbert declared before playing several clips from Star Wars poking fun at the actor’s snafu.

Hamill referenced the episode during his appearance, telling Colbert, “Thanks for bringing it to the American public… I thought maybe nobody noticed, and for the most part, nobody did. And when I got back someone said, ‘Hey, Colbert really nailed you on ‘Meanwhile.'”

But both men agreed that it’s “all in the past now,” and Hamill assured the late night audience, “My pants are very secure tonight.”

Watch Hamill recall his disastrous pants-dropping moment on The Late Show above.