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Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway Pull a "Steve Harvey"

Actors announce the wrong Oscar winner.

By Christina St-JeanPublished 7 years ago 3 min read
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Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel and actor Warren Beatty try to sort out fiasco of Best Picture Oscar presentation.

Anyone watching the Oscars last night had to feel deeply sorry for actors Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.

In what is sure to become one of the biggest Oscar fiascos in history, the wrong Best Picture winner was announced at the 89th Academy Awards ceremony on February 26. The legendary Beatty and Dunaway somehow acquired the "Actress in a Leading Role" envelope which Best Actress Emma Stone (La La Land) says she'd been hanging onto throughout their presentation.

In many versions of the moment, Beatty can be seen looking very confused as he read the contents of the envelope and then looking inside the envelope in his hands for another card. As might be expected, winners like to have the envelopes with their names on it as a memento of their big night, and Stone is no exception. With no one immediately there to help Beatty sort out his confusion regarding the card he had in his hand - the one that said that Emma Stone had won for La La Land - he shows the card to Dunaway, who reads La La Land as the winner.

While La La Land starts their acceptance speeches, it is Jordan Horowitz, a producer on the much-loved movie, that approaches the microphone and tells the stunned crowd that it was Moonlight, the coming of age story of a young black man who is also gay, that won Best Picture honors instead of the ultra-popular musical.

It wasn't until Horowitz insisted that the announcement wasn't a joke that the production team on Moonlight took the stage, with director Barry Jenkins looking absolutely stunned.

According to Mashable, the moment when someone realized that Beatty had the wrong card was witnessed by a reporter from the LA Times. Amy Kaufman tweeted that a colleague saw a stage hand say, "Oh, f-ck. Oh my God. He got the wrong envelope," which led to the flurry of events seen that led to Moonlight getting the honors for Best Picture.

Price Waterhouse Coopers, the accounting firm responsible for organizing all the envelopes prior to the big broadcast, has already released a statement expressing their apologies for the flub that led to what's being called the biggest mistake in Oscar history:

"We sincerely apologize to Moonlight, La La Land, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, and Oscar viewers for the error that was made during the award announcement for Best Picture," the statement read. "The presenters had mistakenly been given the wrong category envelope and when discovered, was immediately corrected. We are currently investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred. We appreciate the grace with which the nominees, the Academy, ABC, and Jimmy Kimmel handled the situation."

"I knew I would screw this up," Kimmel told the crowd in the moments after the mix-up.

For his part, Moonlight director Barry Jenkins seemed to be trying to absorb that his picture had won while still offering some condolences to Dunaway and Beatty, who apologized for his part in the fiasco.

"It’s unfortunate the way things happened," Jenkins said, "but hot damn, we won best picture.”

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About the Creator

Christina St-Jean

I'm a high school English and French teacher who trains in the martial arts and works towards continuous self-improvement.

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