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Sorry, starstruck accountants — backstage selfies at the Oscars are now banned.
A moratorium on PricewaterhouseCoopers staffers using social media at the Academy Awards is just one of several changes the firm has made to prevent a repeat of last year’s Best Picture flub — when the wrong winner was announced because a tweeting beancounter handed presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway the incorrect envelope.
“Our singular focus will be on the show and delivering the correct envelopes,” PwC US chairman and senior partner Tim Ryan said while announcing the reforms Monday.
Beatty originally gave the statues for the biggest award of the night to the filmmakers behind “La La Land” — before interrupting their speech to announce that “Moonlight” was the actual winner.
It later transpired that just moments before handing over the wrong envelope, Brian Cullinan — one of two PwC partners responsible for handling the winners’ names backstage — had tweeted a photo of “La La Land” star and Best Actress winner Emma Stone.
He frantically tried to delete the four tweets he sent while on the job — but it was too late,
Cullinan won’t be allowed back this year. Neither will the company’s other backstage rep from 2017, Martha Ruiz, and their phone-free replacements will be joined by a third accountant, who will sit in the control room with the show’s producers.
All three will memorize the winners beforehand and each will have a full set of envelopes.
They’ll also attend the rehearsals to practice what to do if something goes wrong again.
“It took a long time to respond last year when there was a mistake that we made,” Ryan said. “So, we’re formally practicing the what-ifs.”
Finally, when the envelopes are handed to the presenters this year, both the star and a stage manager will have to confirm it’s the correct one.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Dawn Hudson said last year’s goof was “a big human error, and it was a very public human error,” but she’s confident PwC won’t screw up a second time.
“Let me tell you, I don’t think this error will ever happen again or would happen again,” Hudson said.
“We put in a lot of protocols to make sure it won’t, but I don’t think it will anyway. I think everyone will be very focused on getting that right.”
Ryan says he’ll be on-hand, too, to make sure things go smoothly.
“My nature, just as a person, is healthy paranoia. But I also know in my head that we haven’t left any step undone. We owe that to the Academy,” he said. “While I feel very, very good about all the work that’s been done and the attention to detail that’s in place, our job doesn’t end until that curtain closes.”