How an accountant’s tweeting caused the biggest mistake in Oscars history
■PwC representative gave wrong envelope for Best Picture
Los Angeles: An accountant for the Academy Awards botched the meticulous procedure for announcing the Oscar for best picture when he handed victory to La La Land before declaring Moonlight the real winner, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said on Monday.
However, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has issued an apology for the gaffe.
Accountant Brian Cullinan, who media reports said had been tweeting backstage shortly before, gave presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway the wrong envelope for the top award on Sunday, the accounting firm said in a statement. In a gaffe that stunned the Dolby Theatre crowd in Hollywood and a television audience worldwide, “Cullinan mistakenly handed the back-up envelope for Actress in a Leading Role instead of the envelope for Best Picture” to Beatty and Dunaway, PwC said.
“Once the error occurred, protocols for correcting it were not followed through quickly enough by Mr Cullinan or his partner.”
The Wall Street Journal and TMZ.com reported that Mr Cullinan had posted a backstage photo of actress Emma Stone on Twitter minutes before the mix-up.
The photo, from Mr Cullinan’s Twitter account, was later deleted but was still viewable on Monday on a cached archive of the page. He could not be reached for comment. The mistake was not rectified until the La La Land cast and producers were on stage giving their acceptance speeches. It was left to the musical’s producer, Jordan Horowitz, to put things right.