The firm responsible for counting Oscar votes, PricewaterhouseCoopers, has apologized after that Best Picture mishap to end the ceremonies last night.
In case you’ve somehow missed the biggest live television flub since election night (not sorry), last night’s final Academy Award for Best Picture of the year went to La La Land…until it didn’t. Though the musical was announced as winner and its producers had already begun their speeches, the real Best Picture winner, which was soon revealed in a shocking and unprecedented moment, was Moonlight. So how in the name of Meryl Streep did this all happen?
Well, it has a little something to do with the Academy’s (usually) trusty accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
If you’ve ever watched the Oscars before, you’ve seen PwC’s representatives carrying briefcases full of the winners’ envelopes down the red carpet. They’re often interviewed. Pretty much every year, they give us their same ol’ spiel: they’re the keepers of the night’s biggest secrets. In addition to having tabulated the results, PwC has also been responsible for doling out the correct envelopes to each presenter.
And though they’d seemed to have perfected their system over the past few decades, it appears something has finally slipped through the cracks. Very bad news for PwC, very unfortunate series of events for La La Land, very interesting television for all of us.
This year, the usually flawless team made some sort of inexplicable error not in the counting of the results, but in the hand-off of the envelope. Although the mistake was huge, everyone involved was totally and immediately gracious. Subsequently, PwC released this statement about the mix-up on their Twitter account:
"“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.”"
Surely, over the next few days, more conclusive information will come to light regarding the exact juicy details of the mix-up. But in the meantime, watching the cringe-worthy exact moment everyone realized something had gone terribly awry is both exactly what we need to process this and a thing we never want to think about again. Enjoy!
Next: All the Performances from the Oscars
At least Moonlight came away with the victory.