What are the Top 5 Mistakes in Recent Award Show History?
Given what happened at this year’s Academy Awards, we thought it might be fun to share a few gaffes from recent award show history! In case you missed it, at the 2017 Oscars, the coveted prize of Best Picture was awarded to the wrong film. That’s not even being dramatic, it actually happened.
The final prize of the night, Best Picture, was mistakenly awarded to La La Land due to an envelope-related mistake. After a couple of La La Land producers had given their speeches, it was announced that the award was supposed to go to Moonlight. Host Jimmy Kimmel and two PricewaterhouseCooper accountants even came up on stage to help clear it up. In a crazy twist, the cast and crew of La La Land then handed over the awards to the cast and crew of Moonlight.
In this post, we’ll go over five of the biggest mix-ups in recent award show history, with an honourable mention thrown in at the end! Keep reading to learn more about mistakes that have been made on award show stages.
Check out our infographic of the top five mistakes and then keep reading to watch videos of each event!
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1. La La Land vs Moonlight Mix-up
2017 Academy Awards
Since this is so fresh in our minds, let’s start off with the La La Land/Moonlight mix-up. As we said earlier, the Best Picture award was given to the cast and crew of La La Land by mistake, when the actual winner was Moonlight. The mistake was caught relatively quickly, and the awards were handed off to the deserving winners, but this will go down as one of the biggest mistakes in award show history.
The Academy Award for Best Picture is probably the most coveted award in the film world, which makes this hurt even more. But at the very least, the award went to a fantastic film and the mistake was realised before the broadcast ended. We can’t imagine what would have happened if they had waited until after the show ended to correct the error.
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2. Miss Universe Mistaken Crowning
2015 Miss Universe Pageant
This mistake was among the first gaffes to truly go viral. During the 2015 Miss Universe Pageant, host Steve Harvey crowned the wrong contestant as the winner. Then, he had to correct his mistake, saying that he had named the first runner-up, and transfer the crown from the runner-up to the winner. How embarrassing!
3. Chris Brown or Rihanna?
2011 BET Awards
If you haven’t heard, Chris Brown and Rihanna used to be in a relationship. That is until he assaulted her on the way to the Grammy Awards in 2009. That’s what makes this gaffe so uncomfortable.
At the 2011 BET Awards, the presenter announced that Chris Brown had won the Peoples’ Choice Award when it was actually supposed to go to Rihanna and Drake. She quickly realised her error and corrected herself, eventually handing the award to Drake.