It was an unprecedented night for the Academy Awards, which went through a pretty seamless night until the announcement for Best Picture, which for many is the most highly anticipated moment of the night. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway took an unusually long time to announce the winner, and they later revealed that in fact they had the wrong award card.
“La La Land” was well into their acceptance speeches before any indication of an error had been made. Quickly confusion spread on stage until it became clear that “Moonlight” had in fact won. “La La Land” producer, Jordan Horowitz, told the audience: "There's a mistake. Moonlight, you won best picture.” He held up the card clearly showing the winner was Moonlight.
It is hard to imagine that such an esteemed show could make such a blunder, especially for such a huge award, so what actually happened? Apparently each award has two announcement cards, and the duplicate for Best Actress was given to Warren Beatty instead of the Best Picture card.
PwC released a statement that they take full responsibility for the error, since the only two people who knew the winners beforehand were PwC partners, Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz, who had been distributing all envelopes to each announcer before they went on stage.
PwC stated: “PwC takes full responsibility for the series of mistakes and breaches of established protocol during last night’s Oscars.” They further explained that Mr. Cullinan had given the wrong envelope to Warren Beatty, and was unable to correct it in time.
This mistake will certainly go down in award show history, and certainly added a dramatic and exciting end to the night, but is also a reminder that such mistakes happen even on the largest of scales like the Academy Awards. Even when everything is rehearsed and planned to go a certain way, unforeseen things can happen. While this mistake was certainly embarrassing and uncomfortable, it is not the end of the world, and both casts and crews handled the mistake gracefully. On the positive side, it made an otherwise boring night quite memorable!
