Steve Harvey, the Reynolds Woodcock of our time, was the only person letting out a sigh of relief one year ago today, when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway wrongly declared La La Land Best Picture. In The Hollywood Reporter’s oral history of the snafu, many of the major players — host Jimmy Kimmel, La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz, publicist Mara Buxbaum, A24 head of publicity Nicolette Aizenberg, and more — recounted the night La La Land was mistakenly handed Moonlight’s Best Picture Oscar. And then there’s Steve Harvey, who makes a brief appearance to say, basically, thank God people could stop talking about his 2015 Miss Universe flub, where he gave the wrong contestant the crown.
“I was watching live and I probably knew what had happened before anybody else — ‘cause I saw the panic-stricken look on the producer’s face. When [Horowitz] walked out there and snatched that card out of Warren’s hand, that’s when I knew redemption was mine,†Harvey told THR. “I was finally off the hook. Yeah, OK, I had to live that down: ‘Oh, how could he,’ ‘That’s a bonehead,’ ‘Nobody’s ever done that in the history of Miss Universe.’ But the Oscars is the biggest night in Hollywood, and when they did it, I lit a cigar and drank a glass of scotch and celebrated. I was free! Thank you, God!â€