Let Jimmy Kimmel Take You Behind the Scenes to Explain Everything About the Oscars Mix-Up

“I really was in the middle, and everybody was very keyed up trying to figure out what happened and who did what, and I just kept screwing around through the whole thing. I told [Best Picture presenter] Warren Beatty he was in trouble,” Kimmel said. “But he did a very smart thing. He kept those envelopes. He would not hand them to anybody. He showed people, but he would not hand them over. He kept both of them because that’s the smoking gun there. As soon as you give those envelopes up, who knows which is what, and what happened? The other smart thing is that he went to the microphone to clear things up.”

“It’s funny too because one of our writers saw somebody post a close-up on Instagram. They zoomed in on the envelope that was in [Beatty’s] hand,” he explained, referencing the fact that Beatty was mistakenly given a duplicate of Emma Stone’s card for Best Actress. “I went in, all this commotion was still going on, and I said, ‘Warren, you could see the envelope that you were handed said, “Outstanding Female Actress.”‘ I just announced, ‘You’re free to walk the streets of Hollywood again.’ And I walked out of the room.”