How the system to prevent mistakes caused the biggest one in Oscar history

When presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway incorrectly announced “La La Land” had won the Academy Award for Best Picture Sunday night, it was the beginning of an on-stage, real-time meltdown that ended with “Moonlight” grabbing the night’s marquee prize.

But the mixup — and the awards night’s largest snafu in its 89 years — might have been caused by one of the very systems intended to ensure the awards are presented without a hitch.

The accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has run the ballot counting for the awards for 83 years, always taps two people “to ensure redundancy in everything we do,” partner Brian Cullinan told the Academy in a Medium interview.

Several steps are taken twice: after ballots are tabulated in parts by a team, the two ballot leaders together gather the count for each award category. The two each memorize the winners for every single trophy. And in what eventually spelled disaster for the Best Picture announcement Sunday, two full sets of envelopes, containing the winners’ names in all 24 categories, are carried in two briefcases down the red carpet as the stars arrive, Cullinan said in the interview.

“We stand on opposite sides of the stage, right off-screen, for the entire evening, and we each hand the respective envelope to the presenter,” he added. “It doesn’t sound very complicated, but you have to make sure you’re giving the presenter the right envelope.”

Minutes after the award and envelope for Best Actress in a Leading Role were handed to Emma Stone, who starred in Damien Chazelle’s brightly-colored Old Hollywood-esque musical, Beatty and Dunaway walked out onto the stage to announce the night’s most-lauded award for Best Picture.

But because two envelopes for Best Actress had been printed, the second was somehow handed to the presenters instead of one of the envelopes containing the winner for the actual category of Best Picture.

When Beatty opened the envelope before live cameras, he was clearly befuddled by the answer contained inside. He later told the Los Angeles Times that he “looked down at the card and thought, ‘This is very strange, because it says best actress.’”

After some hesitation, it was Dunaway who took the envelope and mistakenly announced “La La Land” had won.

But as the film’s producers were giving their acceptance speeches, they were interrupted by people walking on stage with the correct envelope. Producer Jordan Horowitz eventually stepped back to the microphone and announced “Moonlight” had won Best Picture instead.

Beatty also tried to explain the situation on stage: “I want to tell you what happened... I opened the envelope and it said, ‘Emma Stone, La La Land.’ That's why I took such a long look at Faye and [the audience]. I wasn't trying to be funny.”

PricewaterhouseCoopers also apologized for the error and promised it was “currently investigating.”

After the awards had been handed out, Stone told reporters that she had been “holding my ‘Best Actress in a Leading Role’ card that entire time,” which confirmed the second copy of the envelope had caused the mistake.

But the actress, holding her own trophy, praised “Moonlight” for its win.

“God, I love ‘Moonlight’ so much,” she said emphatically. “I’m so excited for ‘Moonlight’... I think it’s one of best films of all time.”

This story was originally published February 27, 2017 at 8:06 AM with the headline "How the system to prevent mistakes caused the biggest one in Oscar history."