The BAFTA Cymru Outstanding Contribution Award will be presented to former BBC Wales Head of Drama and producer Julie Gardner, MBE, who co-founded Bad Wolf in 2015. One of BAFTA Cymru’s highest honours, this year’s Award is presented to a Welsh individual who has made an outstanding contribution to Television, Film or Games.
Early in Julie’s career, she co-produced Andrew Davies’ BAFTA-nominated modern retelling of Othello, which went on to win three prestigious Banff Film Festival awards – the Banff Rockie Award, Grand Prize and International Critics’ Prize in 2002. As Head of Drama at BBC Wales she produced the 2005 revival of Doctor Who, which she brought to Wales, with Phil Collinson and Russell T Davies, which also went on to win a Drama Series Award at the 2006 BAFTA Television Awards.
In 2006, Julie produced Russell T Davies’ Doctor Who spin-offs Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. At BBC Wales Drama, she oversaw several independent productions, including Life on Mars, Merlin, Ashes to Ashes, Stuart: A Life Backwards and Emmy winning Girl in A Café.
In 2009, Julie relocated to Los Angeles from her native Glynneath to lead BBC Worldwide Productions and Adjacent Productions with Jane Tranter.
They produced several series including an American adaptation of Getting On for HBO and Da Vinci’s Demons for Starz, which they launched in 2013, locating production in South Wales. Julie was the recipient of the Siân Phillips Award at the BAFTA Cymru Awards 2013.
Julie and Jane launched Bad Wolf in 2015, with Julie now running Bad Wolf America.
In 2020 Julie produced Lucy Prebble & Billie Piper’s I Hate Suzie for Sky Studios. It was nominated for a Drama Series Award at the 2021 BAFTA Television Awards and, in 2023, received the Broadcasting Press Guild Award for Best Drama Mini Series; the RTS Television Award for Drama Writer and the TV Scholar Award for Best Lead Performance in a Comedy. Julie produced The Winter King last year for ITVX and MGM+ and National Television Awards-nominated, Red Eye for ITV.
In the US, Bad Wolf America’s production debut Lady in the Lake, a limited series executively co-produced with Christopher Leggett and Layne Eskridge and starring Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram, written and directed by Alma Har’el, recently launched on Apple TV, with Fifth Season as the studio.
In the US, Julie is in development on future projects with Sony, Legendary, Skydance and Fifth Season. In the UK, Julie is currently working on Doctor Who spin-off, The War Between The Land And The Sea. Written by Russell T Davies and Pete McTighe, this is a Bad Wolf production with BBC Studios. Julie is also currently preparing a second season of Red Eye.
Doctor Who has received five BAFTA Cymru Awards nominations this year.
Julie Gardner MBE said: “Being the recipient of this prestigious Welsh award means the world to me, diolch BAFTA. From the moment I was given the job as BBC Head of Drama Wales in 2003, my mission was to bring projects into Wales The skills, passion, commitment and work ethic of people in Wales, is unbeatable.”
