Names and faces
The Colombian contestant was already wearing this year’s Miss Universe crown when host Steve Harvey returned to announce on live television that he had mistakenly read from a cue card, and that the contestant from the Philippines was actually the winner of this year’s pageant, held in Las Vegas. In the next moments, the crown was removed and placed on the head of a mystified Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach of the Philippines, and other contestants rushed to console Ariadna Gutierrez Arevalo of Colombia. Harvey said it was his mistake and that he would take responsibility for not correctly reading the card, which said Wurtzbach was this year’s winner and Colombia was actually the first runner-up. He held up the card for Fox network cameras to see up close. Talking with reporters afterward, Harvey and an executive for pageant owner WME-IMG called it human error. “Nobody feels worse about this than me,” Harvey said. Wurtzbach appeared stunned as she walked to the front of the stage to stand alongside the crown-wearing Gutierrez before last year’s Miss Universe, from Colombia, removed the crown and placed it on Wurtzbach’s head. Wurtzbach later said she felt conflicting emotions: joy when she was told she had indeed won, concern for Gutierrez and confusion at the whole situation. Harvey also apologized on Twitter but at first misspelled the home countries of both contestants before also fixing that. “I’d like to apologize wholeheartedly to Miss Colombia & Miss Philippines for my huge mistake,” he wrote. “I feel terrible.”
A black actress playing Hermione Granger? J.K. Rowling has no problem with that. The best-selling author of the “Harry Po tte r ” books has responded to mixed reactions after the cast for “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” — a new London play featuring Harry as an adult — was announced Monday. The role of Hermione, made famous in the film versions by Emma Watson, will be played by Swaziland-born actress Noma Dumezweni. Rowling said on Twitter that the character’s skin color had in fact never been specified in the books. “Canon: brown eyes, frizzy hair and very clever. White skin was never specified. Rowling loves black Hermione,” she wrote, adding a kissing emoji at the end. The play, based on a new story by Rowling and others, opens July 30.