As many predicted, the 2 accountants responsible for possibly the biggest flub in Oscars history, has been fired.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Cheryl Boone Isaacs has issued a statement, announcing that Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC) representatives Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz have been permanently banned from all future academy dealings.
According to The Guardian, Cullinan was distracted backstage during the show. The academy president revealed that Cullinan had tweeted (and later deleted) a photo of Emma Stone in the wings posing with her new Oscar statue shortly after her win.
This led to Cullinan’s blunder in handing the wrong envelope (which was a duplicate of the Best Actress card) for best picture to presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. As a result, “La La Land” was mistakenly being announced as Best Picture rather than “Moonlight”.
Boone Isaacs told the Associated Press that the academy’s relationship with PwC, the accounting firm that has been tabulating the Oscars’ votes for the past 83 years, is now “under review” following the mishap.
In the moment of confusion, several media outlets that were reporting the Oscars’ live, scrambled to correct their Twitter updates. Audiences who were watching the awards live on television from around the globe, too, spent a good few minutes wondering what just hit them.
It took 2 minutes and 30 seconds before the error was corrected but that was more than enough time for social media users to come up with some of the funniest memes post-Oscars.
Sources: The Guardian, Movie Web.
