Actress Faye Dunaway, a co-presenter during the Best Picture debacle that will go down as one of the most stunning moments in Oscars history, has finally spoken out about the ensuing controversy.
Though the mishap in which she mistakenly read La La Land as the winner of Hollywood’s most prestigious award occurred two months ago, it’s still fresh in the actress’ mind.
“I could have done something, surely,” Dunaway recalled thinking of the infamous moment during a sit-down interview with NBC Nightly News host Lester Holt. “Why didn’t I see Emma Stone’s name at the top of the card?”
But Dunaway could not have known that her co-presenter, actor Warren Beatty, was incorrectly given the envelope for the Best Actress winner, a mistake for which the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers took responsibility afterwards.
“I thought he was joking,” Dunaway said of Beatty’s pause, which lasted for a few moments before he handed the card over to her and she read the film’s title aloud. The flub was not corrected until after La La Land producers had already begun delivering speeches onstage, when the award was then handed over to the cast of Moonlight on live television. Dunaway said she felt “very guilty” about the mix-up.
Last month, HuffPost reports, the board governing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted to retain the accounting firm PwC, although the accountant responsible for the mistake won’t be involved with the Oscars moving forward.
Watch a clip from the interview below.
—RealClearLife
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