April 26 (UPI) — Faye Dunaway says she felt “very guilty” after the Oscars gaffe in February.
The 76-year-old actress opened up in an interview Monday with Lester Holt on “NBC Nightly News” about mistakenly announcing “La La Land” as the Best Picture winner at the 2017 Academy Awards.
“You are completely stunned,” she said of the experience. “I was very guilty. I could have done something, surely. Why didn’t I see Emma Stone‘s name at the top of the card?”
Dunaway and Warren Beatty were presenting Best Picture at the Oscars when Beatty paused and appeared confused. Dunaway said she thought the actor was stalling and decided to read the card aloud herself.
“He took the card out and he didn’t say anything,” she recalled. “He paused, he looked over me, offstage, he looked around. I finally said, ‘You’re impossible.’ I thought he was joking. I mean, I thought he was stalling. Warren’s like that. He kind of holds the power.”
The “La La Land” cast and crew came onstage after Dunaway announced the musical as the Best Picture winner. Producer Justin Horowitz was in the middle of his acceptance speech when “Moonlight” was confirmed as the actual winner.
“It’s a moment I still have not recovered from,” Dunaway said in a clip from the “NBC Nightly News” interview that aired Tuesday on “Today.”
PricewaterhouseCoopers, the company in charge of the Oscars envelopes, confirmed in March that Dunaway and Beatty were handed the wrong card. The accountants responsible for the flub were permanently removed from all Academy Awards dealings.
