The Same Presenters Who Messed Up The Oscars Last Year May Be Back Again, So Get Ready
If there's one moment that the audience remembers from the 2017 Oscars, it was that ridiculously confusing envelope mix-up that topped off the night and made history. Legendary actors and Bonnie and Clyde co-stars Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty took to the stage to announce Best Picture and ended up blurting out the wrong winner. First they said La La Land (nope), but then it was discovered the victor was, in fact, Moonlight. It was a highly buzzed-about, meme-able scene that people talked about forever after the fact. So, who's presenting at the Oscars this year? Faye & Warren just might be getting a second shot.
According to a source who spoke to TMZ, Dunaway and Beatty attended Academy Award rehearsals at The Dolby Theater and appeared to be practicing jokes related to last year's incident. If the news proves to be true — we already saw something like this coming from a mile away, based on the promos and press for 2018's ceremony. Jimmy Kimmel, who's returning for hosting duties for a second time in a row, poked fun at the mistake-seen-round-the-world in a commercial that shows him still haunted by last year's event. "I can't even open the mail... because of, you know, all the envelopes...," he says. Naturally, Warren Beatty makes an appearance at the end of it all.
But the clip might not exactly reflect Jimmy's true feelings on the subject. The broadcast is live and unexpected spices things up. “I’ll be honest,” the Late Night MC said on Good Morning America. “It will be funny if it happened again.”
He's also still just as baffled as viewers were. “I still don’t know how it happened,” he added. “I’m still not clear how the wrong envelope got into Warren Beatty’s hands.”
The day following the telecast, a statement from PricewaterhouseCoopers — the accounting firm that tabulates the winners — offered up apologies and some clarification. It read:
We sincerely apologize to "Moonlight," "La La Land," Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, and Oscar viewers for the error that was made during the award announcement for Best Picture. The presenters had mistakenly been given the wrong category envelope and when discovered, was immediately corrected. We are currently investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred. We appreciate the grace with which the nominees, the Academy, ABC, and Jimmy Kimmel handled the situation.
Emma Stone noted that she had her Best Actress winner card with her as the gaffe went down. But it was a duplicate envelope to blame for the flub — the copy for her category ended up in Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty's hands instead of the Best Picture one.
One of La La Land's producers, Jordan Horowitz, was at the center of the televised snafu — he memorably stepped to the mic to set the record straight, declaring, "I'm sorry, there's a mistake. 'Moonlight,' you guys won best picture." He recently recalled the frantic blunder, writing in The Guardian:
I just knew it needed to be fixed. Right then, I saw the cameraman and so I just locked my eyes on him, just looked right at him and thought, “I really hope you know what to do now.” Luckily, he quickly zoomed in on the envelope, really fast. He totally nailed it.
"It's unfortunate that things happened the way they did, but hot damn, we won best picture," Moonlight's director Barry Jenkins told the LA Times.
In addition to the possibility of Faye and Warren's return, the 2018 Oscar presenter list includes stars like Margot Robbie, Tiffany Haddish, Laura Dern, Kumail Nanjiani, Oscar Isaac, Viola Davis, Gal Gadot, and Kelly Marie Tran.
You never know what will happen on live television... The 90th Academy Awards air Sunday, March 4 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
