Watch last night’s awkward Best Picture mixup at the Oscars

Not letting up with the jokes, Harvey added, “In closing, I’d like to say in the words of Martin Luther King, ‘Free at last!'” But the Oscars represented diversity very well on Sunday night. The correct envelope was soon produced.

“‘Moonlight’ won”, he declared, “Guys, guys, I’m sorry”.

In his fourth year of handling envelopes for the winners of the Academy Awards, PricewaterhouseCoopers partner Brian Cullinan picked a bad time for a miscue – pulling the envelope for what was supposed to be the Best Picture victor from the wrong pile. Well, we didn’t know that at the time. But that’s what happened.

Although frankly, if an Oscar-wielding Emma Stone suddenly passed by us, we’d probably be a bit distracted too. It really… I don’t know. It needed that clarity. “That’s why I took such a long look at Faye”. You just take it. Stone said she had retained the original envelope announcing her Oscar, so Beatty must have been holding the duplicate. He had been given the wrong envelope. “I am the creator of these moments”.

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

I just righted a wrong. I wanted to see the card, to see the card, and Warren refused to show the card to anybody before he showed it to me.

Moonlight, which follows the life of a black boy dealing with his sexuality, scooped three prizes – best picture, best adapted screenplay and best supporting actor for Mahershala Ali. And once again: “congrats to ‘Moonlight.’ A truly lovely picture made by some even more attractive people”.

Art competitions are weird at their core.

Director Damien Chazelle’s lovable musical was expected to dominate. We all got to hear that moments before he had to give up his Oscar. I think we need to have more of that.

This kind of thing would be easy to forgive in a new star, unaccustomed to the limelight, but Warren Beatty is anything but that. “To all involved - including our presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, the filmmakers, and our fans watching worldwide - we apologize”. What are you going to do?

“I can’t even begin to describe to you the pandemonium this caused – and is still causing tonight”, Georgie, who attends the Oscars every year, wrote in a Facebook post after the show. “It couldn’t have been easy, but these things happen”.