That time in 2017, when Oscar presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway accidentally announced the wrong Best Picture, was a shocking moment for anyone watching. For actors Michelle Williams and Busy Phillipps, who were out in the audience, it was truly memorable.
The longtime close friends — and regular awards show dates — had been on their way out of the ceremony, but they were turned away because the big award was about to be given out, Philipps recalled during a recent conversation the two had on QVC+ HSN+’s Busy This Week.
See their exchange below.
“We knew, cause we were right there in the front row,” Phillips said of the Bonnie and Clyde stars having called out La La Land, after having been given the wrong envelope. “We knew something weird was happening. Ben Affleck was next to me. You reminded me just earlier of what I said to him, which I totally forgot.”
What she said was not so much to Affleck himself, but to one of the characters he’s played.
“You turned to him,” Williams explained, “and said, ‘Do something! Do something!’ Because he was Batman, and he was going to save the rest of us.” She added, “He was just as shocked as the rest of us.”
Philipps confessed that it was something like that. Affleck portrayed the Caped Crusader in multiple films, including 2017’s Justice League.
“He was literally looking back at Matt Damon,” Philipps said of Affleck’s close friend, “who was sitting right behind his brother [Casey Affleck], who was, like, two doors down from you. And I don’t know Ben Affleck. I just was like, ‘He’s Batman. He’s a movie star. He can go onstage and handle it.’ He could not. It turns out, it was very difficult to handle.”
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The La La Land team was already delivering their acceptance speeches when, not Batman or the star of 2016’s The Accountant, but actual accountants for PricewaterhouseCoopers and Oscar crew members took the stage to clear up the confusion. La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz, who had just given an acceptance speech, then returned to the mic to inform the audience the wrong envelope had been handed over and Moonlight was the true winner.
Philipps said her show couldn’t afford to use an image of her, Williams, and Affleck at the ceremony that had gone viral, so she and Williams simply recreated it. They crossed their legs and dropped their mouths open.