Distracted? PwC accountant deletes candid backstage Emma Stone photo

MINUTES before the bungle, the man who handed the wrong envelope to Warren Beatty had something else on his mind.

The deleted tweet, a candid backstage photo of Emma Stone.

BRIAN Cullinan, the PricewaterhouseCoopers’ accountant in charge of handing the winning cards to the presenters during the Oscars ceremony, is facing calls for an explanation on how the best picture mix-up occurred at the 2017 Academy Awards.

Cullinan and his colleague Martha Ruiz were the only two people who knew the results before the ceremony. During the Academy Awards, they hand the winning envelopes to the presenters.

However on the February 26 awards night, a big mistake occurred when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announced La La Land as the winner for best picture — when in fact Moonlight was the real winner.

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ US Chairman pinpointed the error to Cullinan in a statement today.

“At the end of the day, we made a human error,” Ryan told USA Today. “We made a mistake. What happened was, our partner on the left side of the stage, Brian Cullinan, he handed the wrong envelope to Warren Beatty. And then the second we realised that, we notified the appropriate parties and corrected the mistake.”

According to Vocativ journalist Ryan Beckler, Cullinan tweeted a picture of Emma Stone six minutes before the incident.

The tweet was immediately deleted from Cullinan’s account but Beckler tweeted a copy. Storyful was able to find a cached version on Google with a 13-hour time stamp.

The hastily-deleted tweet from Brian Cullinan.

Actor and presenter Faye Dunaway, who read the incorrect winner out on stage, would not elaborate on what went wrong, telling media after the ceremony: “I’m not going to speak about it,” she said.

She also told The Telegraph it was “very quick”.

“The card read that way. It was a very odd thing,” she said before reportedly chatting about moving house with someone backstage.

La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz, who took control of the situation as confusion reigned on stage, has received praise for how he handled the situation, saying: “Look, we won six Oscars. The picture’s been a critical success, a financial success,” he said. “It’s been a wild ride and it ended in spectacular fashion.”

Arguably the biggest stuff-up in Oscars history. Picture: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

Moonlight filmmaker Barry Jenkins also tweeted “much respect” to the man who handed over the Oscar to him.

“I felt a million different things, but I did realise that whatever Jordan was going to say was going to be the truth because he looked over and I just wanted to hug him,” he said.

Several hours after the blunder, PricewaterhouseCoopers issued a statement owning up to the mistake and apologising to the actors, producers, presenters and viewers.

“The presenters had mistakenly been given the wrong category envelope and when discovered, was immediately corrected. We are currently investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred,” the company said.

“We appreciate the grace with which the nominees, the Academy, ABC and Jimmy Kimmel handled the situation.”