Academy boots accountants
Fallout from Oscars flub spreading
The fallout from the historic Oscars 2017 flub is starting to spread: The two accountants involved won’t be coming back to work the Academy Awards, says motion picture academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs.
Boone Isaacs told the Associated Press Wednesday that the two staffers from PricewaterhouseCoopers will never return to the Oscars show. She blamed one of them for being distracted by tweeting during the show.
Academy spokeswoman Teni Melidonian confirmed the report to USA TODAY but had no further comment.
Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz, both high-ranking officials at the firm known as the “Tiffany” of accountancy, were working Sunday night when Cullinan gave the wrong winner envelope to presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, resulting in the mistaken announcement of La La
Land as best picture instead of the true winner, Moonlight.
It took 21⁄ minutes before the 2 error was corrected because of a delayed response by the two accountants and failure to follow their own protocol quickly, PwC said after the debacle.
But will PwC continue to tabulate the Oscar votes for the academy, as it has done since 1934? Boone Isaacs told AP the academy’s relationship with PwC remains under review.
PwC spokeswoman Mao-Lin Shen said Cullinan and Ruiz were still partners with the firm.
In Barcelona for a meeting, PwC global chairman Bob Moritz told CNBC he watched the disaster unfold on TV like so many millions, and in the days since he has made “working with the academy to repair the relationship” among his top priorities.
Cullinan has taken the most heat, and it hasn’t helped that he was tweeting during the show, including a photo of best-actress winner Emma Stone that he posted minutes before handing the wrong envelope to Beatty.
Cullinan and PwC have said his tweeting did not distract him. (The tweets were later deleted.)
Variety reported Wednesday it had obtained photos that show Cullinan engaged on his phone backstage and holding two of the red winners envelopes.
Meanwhile, the academy apologized for another mistake: the use of a very-much-alive Australian producer’s picture for the In Memoriam segment. In a statement on Instagram, the academy extended “our deepest apologies” to producer Jan Chapman, whose photo was mistakenly used in the tribute instead of Chapman’s colleague and friend, the late Janet Patterson. Chapman had said she was “devastated” by the error.