Oscars 2017: Moonlight’s Barry Jenkins says he’s had ‘no explanation’ about Best Picture mix-up

Barry Jenkins has said that he has had no explanation as to why La La Land was announced as the Best Picture winner instead of his film Moonlight at the Oscars.

The filmmaker admitted that he still hadn’t got to the bottom of the blunder, but said that Warren Beatty personally showed him the winning card.

After accepting the trophy, which rightfully belonged to Moonlight, Jenkins told reporters that he didn’t know what had happened.

“No explanation. Things just happen,” he said in the press room after the ceremony.

“I will say, I saw two cards, and so things just happen. I wanted to see the card, to see the card, and Warren refused to show the card to anybody before he showed it to me. And so he did,” he said.

“He came upstairs and he walked over to me, and he showed the card. Everyone was asking, ‘Can I see the card?’ And he was like, ‘No, Barry Jenkins has to see the card, I need him to know.’ And I felt better about what had happened.”

The La La Land cast and crew rushed up on stage when Faye Dunaway, alongside Beatty, announced the film as the winner of Best Picture on Sunday night, only to have to hand over the trophy to Moonlight.

After looking at the right envelope, La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz said: “This is not a joke, Moonlight has won Best Picture.”

While the Academy are yet to clarify exactly what happened, it seems that Beatty and Dunaway were given the Best Actress envelope to open rather than the Best Picture envelope.

Stone has since said that she was holding onto the envelope containing the Best Actress card the ‘entire time’.