What a twist at the end. The 2017 Oscars closed with a shocking, WTF mix-up after presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway incorrectly announced La La Land as the Best Picture winner instead of Moonlight. To make matters worse, the mistake was realized during the middle of the La La Land cast and crew’s acceptance speech. Relive the awkward moment in the video above.
As previously reported, Beatty and Dunaway presented the last award of the evening, and according to Beatty, the winner’s card had Emma Stone’s name on it, leading Dunaway to announce La La Land as the big winner when, in actuality, it was Moonlight that was the victor.
During the confusing moment, Stone could be seen mouthing “oh my god” while a stagehand nervously buzzed about comparing cards. La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz then announced to the the audience that Moonlight had won.
“I’m sorry, no, there’s a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won Best Picture,” Horowitz said. “This is not a joke. Moonlight has won Best Picture.” The producer then held up the correct card for all to see and handed the award over to the cast of Moonlight before Moonlight director Barry Jenkins took the mic.
“This is very unfortunate what happened. Personally, I blame Steve Harvey for this,” host Jimmy Kimmel said, making light of the snafu and poking fun at Harvey’s Miss Universe 2015 flub when he announced the wrong winner. “I would like to see you get an Oscar anyway. Why can’t we just give out a whole bunch of them?”
After the ceremony, Horowitz told E! that he had “mixed feelings” about the now infamous moment, but that he went into producer mode to fix the mistake.
“I’m a producer. I gather things together … and march things forward,” he said of his impressive recovery.
