If, like us, you stayed up to the most un-holy hour to watch The Oscars in all their glory, in your semi-conscious state you would have seen the most monumental of cock-ups in the history of award ceremony cock-ups. If you didn't stay up, no doubt you would have heard people chatting about Oscar-gate this morning so we're going to do our best to describe what happened.
Unfortunately, it wasn't all a dream and Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway did, in fact, call out the wrong name, awarding La La Land the Academy Award for Best Picture instead of the actual winner, Moonlight.
Nightmare. So how did it all happen?
Warren and Faye were on stage and ready to announce the winner for Best Picture. It was down to Warren to open the envelope, and if you watch back, he did take a particularly long time to process what was written on the card before passing it to Faye to read out.
Maybe he knew something wasn't right at this point?
Then the whole La La Land cast and crew assembled on stage to collect their award and it all went downhill from there really. Everyone was left pretty stunned when La La Land's producer Justin Horowitz took to the mic and declared that in actual fact they had lost and Moonlight had won – having to repeat several times: "This is not a joke."
It's almost too painful to watch.
Warren then steps up to explain why the wrong name was read out. He says: " I opened the envelope and it said: Emma Stone – La La Land. That's why I took such a long look at Faye."
Some eagle-eyed viewers have picked up that the original envelope in Warren's hand was in fact the award for Actress in Leading Role – which was awarded to Emma for La La land – and would explain why in one clip Warren can be heard saying, 'it says Emma Stone.'"
But how did Warren Beatty end up with that envelope? As Emma Stone pointed out backstage, she was given that award and envelope earlier in the evening (by Leonardo DiCaprio of all people).
According to Cosmopolitan she was heard saying: "I also was holding my Best Actress in a Leading Role card that entire time.
So whatever story... I don't mean to start stuff, but whatever story that was, I had that card. So I'm not sure that happened."
Hmm. Interesting.
This tweet seems to have a reasonable explanation:
Basically, two professionals from PricewaterhouseCoopers – Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz – are the only two people who know the winners before anyone else, and they explained there are always duplicate envelopes.
WHAT A SHOCKER, EH?
Fancy watching the whole debacle again? Here you go:
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