Incriminating new photos have surfaced showing Brian Cullinan, the PricewaterhouseCoopers accountant, in the moments before Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announced the wrong Best Picture winner at the 2017 Oscars.
Check out the photos of Brian Cullinan here.
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Cullinan has been held responsible for now infamous envelope mix-up that was the biggest Oscars flub in the history of the awards show, and these new photos document how the error was made.
The pictures show Cullinan tweeting on his phone in the minutes before Dunaway mistakenly announced La La Land as the winner of the coveted Best Picture award.
Backstage at 8:53 p.m., Casey Affleck had just won the award for Best Actor and was hugging Warren Beatty. Brian Cullinan was seen right behind them holding two envelopes in his hand, one for Best Actress and the other for Best Picture.
At 9:03 p.m., Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway took the stage at the Oscars.
According to the metadata on the photographer’s camera, Cullinan tweeted a photo of Best Actress winner Emma Stone at 9:05 p.m, but it was later deleted. This clearly shows that Cullinan was on his phone while Beatty and Dunaway were presenting the award for Best Picture.
The photos seem to contradict the “backup pile” explanation offered by PWC’s U.S. chairman and senior partner Tim Ryan.
“There’s a stack for the backups and the ones that are not the backups and he took from the wrong stack,” Ryan said.
“We clearly made a mistake and once the mistake was made we corrected it and owned up to it,” Ryan said. “This is the first time in over 80 years that there has ever been a problem and again we are very disappointed in ourselves. I have reached out to the Academy and shared with them that we take full responsibility that Brian had made the mistake and the firm takes responsibility for that.”
Tim Ryan also spoke out about how Cullinan is handling the situation.
“He feels very, very terrible and horrible,” Ryan said. “He is very upset about this mistake. And as a firm, given that he is a partner of our firm, it is also my mistake and our mistake and we all feel very bad.”
What was your reaction after seeing these new photos of Brian Cullinan backstage at the Oscars?
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[H/T Variety]
