"That’s the smoking gun there"
+ READ ARTICLEAlthough Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t directly involved in the Oscars envelope mix-up that resulted in La La Land being announced as Best Picture instead of Moonlight, the host was privy to the immediate aftermath of the blunder.
During an appearance on Thursday’s episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast, the late night pundit gave a play-by-play breakdown of what happened backstage, detailing his reaction to the gaffe.
“I really was in the middle, and everybody was very keyed up trying to figure out what happened and who did what, and I just kept screwing around through the whole thing. I told [Best Picture presenter] Warren Beatty he was in trouble,” Kimmel said. “But he did a very smart thing. He kept those envelopes. He would not hand them to anybody. He showed people, but he would not hand them over. He kept both of them because that’s the smoking gun there. As soon as you give those envelopes up, who knows which is what, and what happened? The other smart thing is that he went to the microphone to clear things up.”
Kimmel also spoke about how blame was wrongly assigned to Beatty before the incident was cleared up.
“It’s funny too because one of our writers saw somebody post a close-up on Instagram. They zoomed in on the envelope that was in [Beatty’s] hand,” he explained, referencing the fact that Beatty was mistakenly given a duplicate of Emma Stone’s card for Best Actress. “I went in, all this commotion was still going on, and I said, ‘Warren, you could see the envelope that you were handed said, “Outstanding Female Actress.”‘ I just announced, ‘You’re free to walk the streets of Hollywood again.’ And I walked out of the room.”
Read more at TheRinger.com.