And finally, the award for the best blunder in Oscars history goes to...
THE Oscars suffered one of the most embarrassing nights in its history after musical La La Land was wrongly named in front of millions of viewers and a star-studded audience as the winner of best picture.
Duplicate sets of cards, held by the only two people who knew the results, were mistakenly handed to award presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway – and La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz announced the error to the audience, holding up the correct card with the best picture winner, as he said: “There’s a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won best picture.
“This is no joke. I’m afraid they read the wrong thing. This is not a joke, Moonlight, you won best picture.”
Moonlight’s producer, Dede Gardner, said: “I’m still not sure this is real. It’s very humbling to be up here and I hope it’s inspiring to little black boys and brown girls who feel marginalised. I hope they take some inspiration from seeing this beautiful group of artists.”
PricewaterhouseCoopers, which was responsible for the counting and collation of votes, said: “We sincerely apologise 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.”
It came on the worst night for British stars in a decade at the awards, when Beatty and Dunaway had been given a card that revealed that La La Land’s Emma Stone was the leading actress winner, prompting them to incorrectly announce the musical as the winner of the best picture category.
Backstage, a confused Stone later said that she was still holding her winner’s card in her hand when best picture was announced, but there were in fact two identical sets of cards.
Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz from PwC, the tax partner to the awards ceremony, were forced to intervene on stage amid the confusion and chaos.
Mr Cullinan and Ms Ruiz are responsible for manually counting the 7,000 votes made by members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and are the only two people to know the full list of winners before the ceremony.
Moonlight’s director, Barry Jenkins, said, after the film was correctly revealed as the winner: “Very clearly even in my dreams this can’t be true.
“But to hell with dreams because this is true. It’s true, it’s not fake.”
Meanwhile, while in recent years the Oscars has seen a spate of British actors winning the top awards, Sunday’s ceremony was the worst for Britain’s stars in 10 years.
White Helmets, a 40-minute Netflix film about a volunteer rescue group operating in war-torn Syria, saw its British director Orlando von Einsiedel and British producer Joanna Natasegara take the best documentary short award.
Nominees including Dev Patel and Naomie Harris missed out.
La La Land, which had scored a record-tying 14 nominations, ended up with just six wins, including best actress for Emma Stone and best director for Damien Chazelle, the youngest winner of the prize at 32.
Moonlight follows the life of a young black boy dealing with his sexuality, and also won best adapted screenplay and best supporting actor for Mahershala Ali.