Oscars Category Ends in a Tie for Only the 7th Time Ever

It was a historic night at the 98th Academy Awards, as the Best Live-Action Short Film category ended in a tie — a result that’s only been seen at the Oscars six times before.

Both The Singers, directed by Sam A. Davis and produced by Jack Piatt, and Two People Exchanging Saliva, from Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata, were announced as the winners of the Best Live-Action Short Film Oscar on Sunday evening.

“It’s a tie. I’m not joking. It’s actually a tie,” said actor Kumail Nanjiani, who presented the award. “So everyone, calm down. We’re going to get through this!”

He then went on to announce each winner individually, joking between the two acceptance speeches, “Ironic that the short-film Oscar is going to take twice as long.” Similarly, Oscars host Conan O’Brien later joked, “I just want to say congratulations to both winners. You just ruined 22 million Oscar pools.”

As the Two People Exchanging Saliva team accepted their award, Musteata gushed, “We are so happy to be sharing this Oscar with The Singers. We love all of our fellow nominees.”

Piatt told press backstage that it was “incredible” to tie with Two People Exchanging Saliva, calling it “really special” and noting that after getting to know all of the filmmakers in the category, he wished “there could be a five-way tie, to be honest with you.”

Davis added that he previously told the Two People Exchanging Saliva team that if The Singers lost, he hoped that it would have lost to them, “because I saw sort of how incredible their film was, and none of us could imagine what the outcome would be. And certainly we didn’t imagine this.”

The first tie in Oscars history happened in 1932 when Fredric March and Wallace Beery both won the Best Actor award, with Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand later tying for Best Actress in 1968. Ahead of Sunday’s awards, the most recent tie occurred in 2012, when Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty both won Best Sound Editing.