Warren Beatty Gives Official Response to Oscars Kerfuffle

We‘re now a couple days out from the incident itself, and everyone’s still trying to figure out just what in the heck happened at the Oscars on Sunday night. When Faye Dunaway wrongly named La La Land instead of Moonlight as the recipient of the Best Picture Academy Award, she created a buzzy moment and sparked a full-blown investigation as to how things could have gotten mixed up. Fingers have been pointed every which way, with the show’s producers and vote-tabulating accountants both scrambling to cover their respective hindquarters in the wake of the embarrassing gaffe. Late yesterday, however, Dunaway‘s co-presenter Warren Beatty – the man with his hand on the envelope — has offered his official response to the hubbub, and he’s decided to shift blame elsewhere.

Deadline has Beatty’s statement, and he has chosen to focus on the Academy’s role in all of this. Here’s the complete statement, in all its no-BS frankness:

Rather than for me to respond to questions from the press about the Academy ceremony, I feel it would be more appropriate for the president of the Academy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, to publicly clarify what happened as soon as possible.

Consider the buck passed! The Academy had issued their own statement the evening before, fully apologizing and outing the accounting firm as the real culprit:

We deeply regret the mistakes that were made during the presentation of the Best Picture category during last night’s Oscar ceremony. We apologize to the entire cast and crew of La La Land and Moonlight whose experience was profoundly altered by this error. We salute the tremendous grace they displayed under the circumstances. To all involved — including our presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, the filmmakers, and our fans watching worldwide — we apologize.

The situation feels close to finally dying down, a bizarre footnote in the Oscar history books. Either way, you can be sure that whoever announced the Best Picture winner next year will give the envelope a good, long, hard look before they start speaking.