Watch the Insane Oscars Mishap Where ‘Moonlight’ Won Best Picture After ‘La La Land’ Was Named
The Oscars have long had surprising moments, but Sunday night just gave us the most insane moment in Academy Awards history. Moonlight won Best Picture, but only after presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway mistakenly named La La Land the winner.
It wasn’t just a tiny mistake corrected moments later. It took an entirely two minutes for the Oscars to correct the mishap. When the La La Land cast and crew were nearly finished with their acceptance speeches, the camera suddenly cut to an awkward angle shooting at the top of the stage and host Jimmy Kimmel came on stage to reveal Moonlight was the actual winner. Beatty attempted to explain himself, but it makes little sense. Why did Dunaway read the wrong title when it was clearly the incorrect envelope? Who gave them the wrong envelope? And why the hell did it take a full two minutes to fix it? It will forever be an Oscars mystery, or perhaps the plot of True Detective Season 3.
Here’s the part where Beatty and Dunaway stand there thinking, “Hm, this is clearly the wrong envelope, but screw it!”
And then someone tells the La La Land folks they just read their speeches for nothing.
And here’s Ryan Gosling LOLing over the snafu:
According to USA Today, here’s what went down backstage:
The accountant from PriceWaterhouseCoopers jumps up and says, “He (presenter Warren Beatty) took the wrong envelope!” and goes running onstage. Craziness breaks out. No one knows how Beatty got a best actress envelope; Stone later tells reporters in the media room that she has been holding her envelope the entire time.
Here’s Stone revealing that she had her envelope the whole time:
But wait, could there have been a duplicate Best Actress envelope? Here’s a close-up of the one Beatty was holding:
But then Jenkins revealed on ABC after the ceremony that he saw Beatty holding two envelopes.
UPDATE: PricewaterhouseCoopers has issued a statement clarifying what happened. But still, who gave them the envelope and why were there duplicates?
Beyond being purely shocking, it was the most exciting and beautiful moment in the entire broadcast. The Moonlight cast, along with practically everyone in the audience, broke into tears as they stormed the stage to accept their award.