Actress, Faye Dunaway, revealed that she thought Warren Beatty was joking when he handed her the wrong film at the Academy Awards ceremony.
In February at the 2017 Academy of Motion Pictures Sciences and Arts Awards show, Dunaway and Beatty were honored by being chosen to present the Academy Award for best picture. Beatty, who held the card with the name of the winning film, very playfully paused before sliding it in front of Dunaway, who announced that La La Land had won the prize.
“He took the card out, and he didn’t say anything. He paused,” said Dunaway during an interview on the Monday episode of NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt. “He looked over me, offstage. He looked around. And 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…. I thought, ‘I could have done something, surely. Why didn’t I see Emma Stone’s name on the top of the card?”
Moonlight was called onto the stage after the production members of La La Land accepted the award. A member of the Academy production staff had to take the stage and announce that a mistake had been made. He had to convince the crowd that there was no joke, numerous times insisting that Moonlight was the rightful winner of the award.
Dunaway, who is 76 years old, will speak more about the subject on Tuesday morning when she visits the Today show. She admitted that she was stunned by the mistake and felt incredibly guilty about it.