Jimmy Kimmel reveals his reaction to last year’s epic Oscars stuff-up

LAST year’s Best Picture mistake will live on in TV infamy forever, and host Jimmy Kimmel has finally revealed what he was really thinking as it all went down.

La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz holds up the card reading actual Best Picture winner Moonlight with actor Warren Beatty and host Jimmy Kimmel. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

IT’S hard to believe it’s been a year since the Best Picture envelope-geddon.

La La Land was infamously mistakenly announced as the top Oscar winner, only for confusion to reign and chaos to take hold before the record was righted and Moonlight was announced as the rightful Oscar champ in one of the most cringe-worthy live TV moments ever.

The moment disaster struck. (Eddy Chen/ABC via Getty Images)

A year on, Jimmy Kimmel — the 2017 host (who is reprising the role again this year) — has spoken freely to The Hollywood Reporter and People about what was going through his mind during that whole ordeal.

Here’s what we learned from those interviews:

WHEN THE WHOLE THING WENT DOWN, JIMMY WAS SITTING WITH MATT DAMON

Kimmel had been planning to end the show with a bit needling Matt Damon — his longtime pretend-nemesis — for not winning any awards, so he was sitting next to Damon in the audience when Warren Beatty had Faye Dunaway read the wrong name. “I was sitting with Matt Damon (in the audience), and when we determined that something was awry, I thought somebody’s gotta go up there and say something. I thought, ‘Oh, I’m the only one who has a microphone on, so it should probably be me,’”

HE THOUGHT AT FIRST THAT IT WAS A PROBLEM WITH THE PROMPTER

Kimmel told THR: “I think the primary issue at rehearsal — and this was something that was in my head when that envelope moment happened — was how well [Beatty and Dunaway] could see the teleprompter.”

DENZEL WASHINGTON KEPT HIM ON TASK

“I strolled up onstage, looked around to see what was happening and made a couple of jokes to try to settle things down,” Kimmel told People. “Denzel Washington actually gave me a signal to let the guys from Moonlight speak, which made sense. Luckily Denzel was thinking, because I really wasn’t … It was like I was walking around in a dream.”

This story originally appeared in Decider and is republished here with permission.

Originally published as Jimmy Kimmel reveals his reaction to last year’s epic Oscars stuff-up