The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
STEVE HARVEY SAYS HE FEELS BEATTY’S PAIN
Radio personality knows Beatty’s pain, offers his help.
Millions of viewers watched (and cringed) Sunday night when “Moonlight” was named best-picture winner only after “La La Land” had mistakenly been named as such and the film’s team was already making thankyou speeches and clutching Oscar trophies. If there’s one guy who could totally relate, it’s part-time Atlantan Steve Harvey.
“Warren, I know your pain. I can help Warren Beatty get through this. I’m going to show him how to handle it: with dignity and grace,” Harvey said Monday morning during his radio show, which airs locally on MAJIC 107.5 FM.
Beatty and “Bonnie and Clyde” costar Faye Dunaway introduced the final category of the night, but they received the wrong envelope.
In a statement released about 3 a.m. Monday, PricewaterhouseCoopers took the blame.
Jimmy Kimmel, who hosted the 2017 Oscars, did his best to handle the gaffe with humor, joking in the moment that he blamed Harvey, who famously crowned the wrong Miss Universe winner in December 2o15. After announcing Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutiérrez had won, Harvey returned to the stage to say he had misread the information and in fact Miss Philippines Pia Wurtzbach had earned the title.
“I remember it like it happened yesterday,” Harvey said Monday morning. “They handed me a card with three names on it. They put the winner’s name in the corner under my damn thumb.”
In rehearsals, there were only two names on the practice cards, leading to the confusion, he said. Harvey strongly hinted that Beatty received more support in the moment and has faced less criticism afterward than he did.
“Thank God for producers that stand strong with their talent,” Harvey said. “Men and women willing to go out there and put their job on the line. I alone walked the walk of shame, down the runway. No flowers in my hand. Just a microphone and a look of ‘oh hell no.’ Warren Beatty had the same ‘oh hell no’ look.”
Harvey alluded to the strife he faced after inadvertently announcing the wrong beauty queen.
At the pageant, Gutiérrez waved and smiled from the runway for a few minutes before Harvey returned to reveal the goof. Pageant producers suggested not correcting the situation right away but instead fixing it the next day via a press release, he said.
In closing Harvey quipped that the Oscars error has exonerated him and linked him and Beatty for all time.
“Call me, Warren Beatty. Me and Warren Beatty gonna take photos together,” he said. “In the words of Martin Luther King: Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I’m free at last!”