Now we know: The Best Picture Oscar debacle was the accountants' fault

Now we know: The Best Picture Oscar debacle was the accountants' fault

Warren Beatty, you're off the hook. 

You too, Faye Dunaway. And to La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz: You handled this as well as anyone could have.

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The blame for the Best Picture Oscar snafu has finally been owned: PricewaterhouseCoopers, the London-based accounting and "professional services" firm that has handled the Academy Awards winners for years, admitted Sunday night that they messed up.

Beatty was handed the wrong envelope.

PricewaterhouseCoopers' statement, sent to Mashable later Sunday night, reads:

We sincerely apologize 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. The presenters had mistakenly been given the wrong category envelope and when discovered, was immediately corrected. We are currently investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred. We appreciate the grace with which the nominees, the Academy, ABC, and Jimmy Kimmel handled the situation.

The key here: There are always two identical winners' envelopes, kept by PwC officials standing on opposite ends of the stage. 

Somehow, Beatty — presenting Best Picture with Dunaway — had been given the envelope for Best Actress, which had already been announced as La La Land's Emma Stone moments before. On the other side of the stage, Beatty got handed an identical envelope.

As anyone would, Beatty tried to roll with it.

He looked over the card two times, then a third. He clearly wasn't sure — it didn't make sense that his envelope said "Emma Stone." And so he showed it to his fellow presenter, Dunaway, who saw the words La La Land. 

And, because the clock was ticking, she spoke them.

The rest of that story has been well-documented. The La La Land crew took the stage and began to give speeches — then were told by panicking production crew that they'd actually lost. Moonlight was the real winner.

For the next couple of hours, theories flew: Emma Stone called Beatty's explanation into question. Moonlight director Barry Jenkins said he saw "two envelopes." No one was sure exactly what happened or why.

But now we know: Somehow, someone handed off the wrong envelope to Beatty backstage. 

The PwC accountants, whose one job is to get this stuff right, got it wrong.

At least they owned it. Eventually.