Free at last. Steve Harvey told Extra’s Mario Lopez that he felt vindicated by the 2017 Oscars best picture mix-up. In fact, he celebrated and toasted to Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway’s now-historic mistake.
“I felt really good and warm and fuzzy on the inside,” the talk show host, who infamously announced the wrong winner during the 2015 Miss Universe pageant, jokingly said. “I actually lit a cigar and got a glass of scotch and celebrated.”
While taking in the moment, Harvey recalled: “I was sitting there going, ‘Yeah, okay,’ ‘cause, you know, for a whole year I’ve been hearing, ‘Oh, how could he? Oh, my God! No one ever does that. That’s a mistake! How did he do that? That’s ridiculous.’ Okay, the granddaddy of them all, the Oscars, and they handed that guy the wrong envelope … boy, do I know that feeling.”
As previously reported, Bonnie and Clyde costars Beatty and Dunaway presented the award for best picture to La La Land instead of real winner, Moonlight; it was later revealed that Beatty was handed the wrong envelope by PwC partner Brian Cullinan. The envelope Beatty was holding confirmed Emma Stone’s best actress win in La La Land (she’d accepted the trophy moments earlier).
And Harvey made a good point while chatting with Lopez: “[Faye] disappeared and Warren didn’t even read the wrong name, but when he walked back up to do the apology he became the guy — the lady read the name and then she just left!” the talk show host recalled, reiterating that watching the disastrous snafu go down was indeed vindicating.
“People have read the wrong name a thousand times — it’s just you never see it because it’s not live, but boy, when it’s live, that was one of the greatest moments of television for me in my entire life, watching them.”
