Only two people in the world know the contents of the Oscar winner envelopes before they're opened on stage. Those two people are Martha Ruiz and Brian Cullinan, who co-head the Oscar ballot counting team at PricewaterhouseCoopers. For 83 years, the firm has handled the process of counting all the votes from the now-6,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Until Sunday night, there had never been a screw-up of this magnitude in Academy Awards history when Warren Beatty was handed the wrong envelope and read the name of the incorrect Best Picture winner on stage. On Monday morning, PwC issued an apology for the mix-up.

"We sincerely apologise to Moonlight, La La Land, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, and the Oscar viewers for the error that was made during the award announcement for Best Picture," the accounting firm said in a statement. "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. We appreciate the grace with which the nominees, the Academy, and Jimmy Kimmel handled the situation."

As Beatty explained after the flub, "I opened the envelope and it said Emma Stone, La La Land. That's why I looked at Faye, and at you. I wasn't trying to be funny."

It's still unclear how the mistake was made, but by the time it was realised, La La Land producers had already begun their speeches.

As Fortune explained of the process:

Though the duo counts the ballots multiple times, they don't write down the results in one place—so there's no one piece of paper that can somehow end up in the wrong hands. "We go through the process of memorizing who all the winners are," she says. Committing all the names to memory doubles as an insurance policy in case the awards presenters call out the wrong name. During the awards show, Ruiz and Cullinan stand backstage and hand out the envelopes containing the winning names—which they personally stuff.

But PwC has vowed to look into its normally-reliable process. Last night, a picture was circulating on social media showing Beatty holding the Best Actress envelope, which Oscar-winner Emma Stone confirmed was in her hand. Beatty was somehow handed a backup Best Actress winner envelope. This is what the investigation will focus on, according to The Guardian:

Attention will focus on a provision intended to make the system failsafe: there are duplicate envelopes of the complete set of results, held in the wings in case anything should go wrong with a presenter or an envelope. The key question will be whether the duplicate of the best actress award, which had just been announced, was handed to Beatty in the wings as he walked out to announce the best picture winner.

The Academy has still not made an official statement.

From: Esquire US