On February 26, 2017, The 89th Academy Awards ceremony was held. While this was a celebration and moment to rejoice, it was tainted by a blunder. When it was time to announce the best picture, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were invited to announce the result.

On stage, they were handed an envelope with the winner inside. When Beatty opened the envelope, he was hesitant and started slowly “And the academy award…for best picture…” The audience laughed, assuming, that Beatty was trying to build suspense.

Faye Dunaway, who was standing next to him read the envelope, and announced, “La La Land!” The crowd cheered, and the La La Land crew was called on stage. Members of the Crew started to give their speeches, while people started to run around in the background.

After a few minutes, the producers of La La Land were confronted with the news that there has been an accident. Moonlight had won the academy award. Upon hearing this, Jordan Horowitz, a producer for La La Land, announced, “I’m sorry, there’s a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won Best Picture. This is not a joke.”

Jimmy Kimmel, the host of the show, immediately tried to lighten the mood by saying that “Personally, [he blames] Steve Harvey for this.” Here, he was alluding to another scenario that shared an undeniable parallelism.

Steve Harvey, the host of miss universe stated that the winner was Miss Colombia when reality it was Miss Philippines. He had to remove the crown from Miss Colombia’s head and place it on Miss Philippines’.

The award for Miss Universe was one that both the contestants had been competing for a long time, making the situation even worse. Not only did this break the heart of Miss Colombia, it also made the victory less satisfying for Miss Philippines.

This kind of mistake, although unintended, can entail many repercussions. In addition, this accident was highly memorable, and will most likely never be forgotten.

Adarsh Abbagani