YOU HAD ONE JOB!
Epic Oscar screwup as ‘La La Land’ is announced Best Picture — but ‘Moonlight’ really wins
MISTAKE? That’s one word for it.
In a plot twist far more dramatic than any you could see in one of Sunday’s nominees, the Oscars descended into chaos after “La La Land” was mistakenly awarded Best Picture instead of rightful winner “Moonlight.”
The jaw-dropping blunder occurred after presenter Faye Dunaway announced “La La Land" had won, prompting the red-hot musical’s cast and crew to waltz up to the stage and accept the golden trophy.
But “La La Land" producer Jordan Horowitz quickly stopped the celebration to declare the rightful winner, holding up the winner’s card to prove an error had been made.
“There’s a mistake,” Horowitz said into the microphone, leaving the star-studded crowd bewildered. “‘Moonlight,’ you guys won Best Picture. This is not a joke.”
Warren Beatty, Dunaway’s co-presenter, had paused for several seconds after reading the card, before Dunaway blurted out what proved to be the wrong winner.
Beatty attempted to explain what happened as the “La La Land” group remained on stage, clearly stunned.
“I opened the envelope and it said Emma Stone, ‘La La Land.’ That’s why I took such a long look at Faye, and at you. I wasn’t trying to be funny,” Beatty said.
A zoomed-in image of Beatty’s hands onstage showed the actor was holding an envelope with the words “Actress in a Leading Role.”
Many — including Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel — compared the flub to comedian Steve Harvey accidentally announcing the wrong winner at the Miss Universe 2015 pageant. “This is very unfortunate what happened," Kimmel said on stage, improvising. “Personally, I blame Steve Harvey for this.” “La La Land,” which tied an Oscars record with 14 nominations, ended up taking home six awards, including Best Original Score, Best Original Song for “City of Stars” and Best Director for Damien Chazelle. The indirect path to victory concluded an overall impressive night for “Moonlight,” which earned three Oscars on Sunday.
Before the fiasco, the Academy Awards were highlighted by a pair of African-American actors — “Moonlight” star Mahershala Ali and “Fences” star Viola Davis — winning Best Supporting Actor and Actress.
Their wins were significant, considering the last two Oscars didn't feature a single nonwhite nominee in any of the acting categories, inspiring the #OscarsSoWhite controversy.
Ali and Davis were two of the seven actors of color — including a record-setting six AfricanAmericans — who were nominat-
ed for acting awards this year.
With her win, Davis became the first black actor win an Oscar, Grammy and Tony.
“There’s one place that all the people with the greatest potential are gathered. One place — and that’s the graveyard,” Davis said in her acceptance speech, choking back tears. “People ask me all the time, ‘What kind of stories do you want to tell, Viola?’ And I say, ‘Exhume those bodies, exhume those stories — the stories of the people who dreamed big and never saw those dreams to fruition.
Meanwhile, “Manchester by the Sea” star Casey Affleck won Best Actor for his chilling performance as a reclusive handyman fated with taking care of his nephew after the death of his brother. He beat out fellow favorite Denzel Washington, who starred in “Fences” alongside Davis.
Politics took center stage for much of Sunday’s award show, with Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, who skipped the event at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, slamming President Trump's travel ban after his movie “The Salesman” won Best Foreign Language Film.
“Dividing the world into the ‘us’ and ‘our enemies’ categories creates fear, a deceitful justification for aggression and war,” Farhadi, who decided to sit out the Oscars out of respect to those impacted by Trump’s ban, said in a prepared statement.
Kimmel poked fun at Trump through the night as well, at one point jokingly introducing Meryl Streep as an actress known for her “many uninspiring and overrated performances.” It was a clear jab at the President, who slammed Streep on Twitter as “overrated” after she blasted Trump’s anti-immigration stance in her Golden Globes speech last month
But all of that quickly became a distance memory after the Oscars’ final act ended with anything but a Hollywood ending.