Oscars 2017 goof-up: Hollywood stars have the best reactions

Of the nine nominees of Best Picture, three were stories nominated by African-American actors and actresses, and “Moonlight” was the victor. And then I just thought, Oh, my God, how does this happen? How.

The victim count from the ceremony is likely to grow as the PwC investigation unfolds, with Jimmy Kimmel being the first to assume some blame, concluding the evening’s entertainment by pledging that his debut hosting of the Academy Awards would be his one and only.

This kind of thing would be easy to forgive in a new star, unaccustomed to the limelight, but Warren Beatty is anything but that.

It was an unprecedented Oscar mistake. He showed it to Dunaway, who barely looked at it before announcing La La Land. Moonlight came as the surprise victor as initially the best picture announced as La La Land, but moments later it was revealed that it was a mistake.

The Academy proceeded to explain that professional services film PricewaterhouseCoopers had accepted “full responsibility” for the gaffe. Until last night, when presenter Warren Beatty was mistakenly given the wrong envelope, leading him to initially announce “La La Land” as the victor of best picture instead of “Moonlight”. They also added that they were now investigating “how this could have happened”.

After ending the show, Kimmel spoke to Beatty backstage, who showed him the envelopes. As always, there were many memorable moments, but the most memorable of all was when Jordan Horowitz, producer of La La Land, announced to the audience that-contrary to what they’d just heard from Faye Dunaway-his movie had not won the Academy Award for Best Picture. But she did, and the cast and crew of Moonlight were of course shocked by the mistake, but seemingly not shocked by the win. “Oh my god, he got the wrong envelope”, the LA Times reported. Apparently Faye Dunaway was given the previous category’s envelope which read – Emma Stone, La La Land.

Many people took to social media to speculate at what Gosling may have said to the woman. “I wasn’t trying to be amusing”, Beatty said. So now to have it out in the world and have it be – it won best picture!

In fact, it took over two minutes on air, during which time the “La La Land” team gave three acceptance speeches, before PwC corrected the mistake on stage.

WATCH: “Moonlight” or “La La Land”?

Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is responsible for calculating the results of the voting process and are in charge of handing the envelopes to presenters, and have apologised unreservedly for the mistake.

Apparently, Dunaway and Beatty had a bit of an argument during the show’s rehearsal on Saturday, with both of them fighting for the honor of reading the victor of Best Picture. Each of them has a set of envelopes for all two dozen categories. His colleague, Martha Ruiz, stood in the wings, stage right.

“Much respect, sir, much respect”, Moonlight director Barry Jenkins said to Beatty.

It is unknown why there was still a Best Actress duplicate available when Beatty walked on stage. The problem was, the envelope in question was a duplicate of the “Actress in a Leading Role” victor, which announced Emma Stone as that victor for “La La Land”, leading to all the confusion.

As those involved with the movies up for the Best Picture award at Sunday’s Oscars were sitting on pins and needles, most people at home were just ready for the show to finally end.

Conan O’Brien defended Beatty, saying that the envelope he was given “was pretty confusing”.

And in an eerily prescient interview with the Huffington Post, he addressed the unthinkable scenario that a wrong victor might be announced.

And the rest, as they say, has gone down in Hollywood history.