PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accountancy firm that has overseen the counting of the Oscars ballots for 83 years, has apologised for the most spectacular blunder in the history of the starry ceremony – when the award for best film was mistakenly presented to La La Land instead of the actual winner Moonlight.

The company promised to investigate the error after Warren Beatty, who was presenting the best picture award with Faye Dunaway, ended up with the wrong envelope. “We sincerely apologise to Moonlight, La La Land, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, and Oscar viewers for the error that was made during the award announcement for best picture,” PwC said in a statement.

Attention will focus on a provision intended to make the system failsafe: there are duplicate envelopes of the complete set of results, held in the wings in case anything should go wrong with a presenter or an envelope. The key question will be whether the duplicate of the best actress award, which had just been announced, was handed to Beatty in the wings as he walked out to announce best picture.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty open the envelope that later turned out the be the wrong one. Photograph: Image Group LA/Getty Images

PwC, one of the best-known accountancy firms in the world, has supervised counting the ballots and the announcements, for the majority of Academy Awards ceremonies. Its employees wait in the wings, passing the results to the presenters. The failure of a system that was supposed to be foolproof, checked and counterchecked repeatedly, could not have been more public – watched by Hollywood stars and millions of people across the world on television.

Some of the focus has shifted to PWC supervisors Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz, who oversee the counting procedures and are the only two people who know the winners list before the ceremony.

In a prescient interview with the Huffington Post last week, under the headline “What would happen if a presenter announced the wrong winner at the Oscars?”, Cullinan and Ruiz discuss the “unlikely” eventuality that the wrong nominee will be called.

They told the news website that the exact procedure for dealing with such a mistake was unknown because such errors had never been made in the Oscars’ 88-year history.

“We would make sure that the correct person was known very quickly,” Cullinan told the Huffington Post. “Whether that entails stopping the show, us walking onstage, us signalling to the stage manager – that’s really a game-time decision, if something like that were to happen. Again, it’s so unlikely.”

Ruiz and Cullinan wrote of their excitement at attending the ceremony on Twitter but have gone quiet since the blunder.

Brian Cullinan (@briancullinan_) Interview on Fox News yesterday about Oscar weekend! The day is here! #Oscars #PWC pic.twitter.com/TOro4wY6WK

Martha Ruiz (@MarthaLTRuiz) Getting ready to head to the show... pic.twitter.com/9R8XQKAhTa

A closeup of Beatty’s hand as he came on stage showed he was holding an envelope for the best actress award – which had already been announced and went to Emma Stone for La La Land. Stone said she had retained the envelope that announced her Oscar, so Beatty must have been holding the duplicate.



When he opened the envelope and took out the card, Beatty appeared concerned, pausing and looking to see if there was another card inside. He then passed it to Dunaway who, seeing only La La Land named on the card, proclaimed it the winner. The euphoric La La Land team crowded on to the stage and its producer, Marc Platt, began his thank you speech. According to USA Today, which had reporters backstage, a member of the accountancy staff then exclaimed “He took the wrong envelope!” and ran on to the stage to stop the speech.

As the truth dawned on the rest of the La La Land crew, producer Jordan Horowitz, carrying the Oscar statuette, held up his hand and told the audience the musical had not won and that this was “not a joke”. Beatty had by now been given the correct card, which revealed the real winner to be Moonlight. The stunned Moonlight crew came up on to the stage and Horowitz handed the statuette to its director, Barry Jenkins.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Martha Ruiz and Brian Cullinan arrive at the ceremony. Photograph: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

Earlier in the week, Cullinan and Ruiz also gave an interview to the BBC, explaining the supposedly watertight system. They told how they were helped by a small team to count and recount the paper and electronic votes by the 7,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts as soon as the ballot closed on Tuesday. The votes were all printed out and counted and recounted manually. She and Cullinan personally put the results into the envelopes, checked and sealed them, and then memorised the results in case anything happened to the envelopes.

The envelopes were locked in a safe until the day of the ceremony, when the accountants travelled separately to the theatre under security protection, each with a complete set of results. Each carried their briefcase of envelopes to the stage, standing stage right and stage left, ready to hand them to the presenters seconds before they walked on stage. They were confident nothing could go wrong – until the night when it did, and the world was watching.