In something that hasn't happened the 89-year history of the Academy Awards, the wrong Best Picture winner was announced at the 2017 Oscars. Although it's unclear what exactly went wrong when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announced the winner, after some confusion, Dunaway named La La Land as the winning film — but, in fact, Moonlight was the real winner. After the cast of La La Land began to give their acceptance speeches, they were informed of the mix-up, corrected themselves, and announced that "there was a mistake" and Moonlight was the real winner. It was all very, very confusing. And awkward. And generally uncomfortable.
In a clip of the awkward mix-up, you can see producers informing the cast in the background of the mix-up. The reactions seem range from shocked to confused to panicked (probably similar to the emotions viewers felt while watching the whole thing go down), but they eventually handed the award over to Moonlight. The whole thing is, yes, incredibly uncomfortable. But the La La Land cast does the only thing they can do in such a situation — graciously give the award to the Moonlight team and let them take the stage in what was probably a chaotic moment for everyone involved.
Take a look at the clip below to get a sense of the full scale of the chaos in the moment itself.
So, yes, it was generally pretty awkward. But the La La Land cast managed to handle it as well as they could have, IMO. It's certainly not a spot that many of us would want to find ourselves in, but they managed to deal with it in a way that ended in the correct winners getting the spotlight they deserved. That's admirable, to say the least.
