PwC Hires Bodyguards for Oscars Accountants Following Death Threats Over #EnvelopeGate
Pair behind epic snafu will no longer work awards ceremony
Joe Otterson | March 2, 2017 @ 7:31 AM
Last Updated: March 2, 2017 @ 8:42 AM
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The PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants responsible for the epic Oscars Best Picture flub have been assigned bodyguards after receiving a wave of threats.
The accounting firm has hired protection for Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz and their families, per TMZ. The move comes in response to targeted harassment online, with one person reportedly writing “You f—ing idiot, i will f— you every day.” Another said: “I hope you get fired and get cancer.”
At Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, Cullinan and Ruiz had a complete set of envelopes, and each was supposed to have memorized the winners in each category.
Leonardo DiCaprio, who presented the Best Actress award, entered from stage left and received the envelope from Ruiz; when it came time to present Best Picture, Warren Beatty received an envelope from Cullinan — but the PwC partner mistakenly gave him the spare Best Actress envelope that bore the name of Emma Stone and “La La Land,” rather than the Best Picture envelope that bore the name “Moonlight.”
And the rest, as they say, is history. Beatty and his “Bonnie and Clyde” co-star Faye Dunaway read out “La La Land” instead of “Moonlight,” forcing the musical’s producer to grab the mic and announce that the latter film had in fact won the Oscar.
8 Things to Know About the Accountant Behind the Oscars Envelope Snafu (Photos)
Let's be honest: The part of the Oscars that no one really cares about is when the PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants come out to explain how the votes are counted. Yet, it is one of those very accountants who was responsible for the worst mix-up in Oscar history. Here's what we know about PwC accountant Brian Cullinan and what led to the moment that will live in Hollywood infamy.
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Brian Cullinan was named to the elite, secret circle of Oscars accountants in 2014, having worked at PwC for more than 30 years and serving as the head of PwC's entertainment, media and communications assurance practice. As the head of the Oscar balloting process, he is one of only two people who knows who is going to win before the envelopes are opened on Oscar night.
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It's the job of the PwC accountants to hand out the envelopes to the awards presenters during the show. Each accountant sits on different wings of the stage, holding a copy of each envelope for all 24 Oscar categories. This way, they can easily get an envelope to any presenter if they have to change which side of the stage they will walk on from.
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A couple days before the Oscars, Cullinan was asked by the Huffington Post what would happen if the wrong winner was announced during the show. “We would make sure that the correct person was known very quickly,” he said. “Whether that entails stopping the show, us walking onstage, us signaling to the stage manager — that’s really a game-time decision, if something like that were to happen. Again, it’s so unlikely.”
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Just before Best Picture presenters Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty took to the stage, Cullinan tweeted out a picture of Emma Stone holding her Oscar for Best Actress. Cullinan has since deleted the pictures of celebrities that he took backstage during the show, but a screencap of the Stone picture he took just minutes before the Best Picture incident occurred went viral.
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Taking pictures of and with celebrities seems to be a favorite pastime of Cullinan's, having posted pictures at past Oscars with celebs like Alicia Vikander, John Legend, and Chris Rock. In an interview with the alumni magazine for his alma mater, Cornell University, Cullinan spoke at length about how meeting celebrities was one of the best parts of his job.
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It was around the same time that Cullinan took the picture of Stone that he mistakenly gave Beatty his duplicate envelope for the Best Actress category instead of the envelope containing proof that "Moonlight" had won Best Picture. (This was why Beatty paused after opening the envelope.)
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As the "La La Land" producers made their acceptance speeches, Cullinan ran onstage with the two Best Picture envelopes to inform the cast and crew of Damien Chazelle's musical that they had not won. Amidst the confusion as the "Moonlight" team took the stage to receive their award, Beatty could be seen speaking to Cullinan about what had happened.
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After the event, PricewaterhouseCoopers released an apology for the incident, identifying Cullinan as the one responsible for the switched envelopes and saying that once "La La Land" had been named the winner, "protocols for correcting it were not followed through quickly enough by Mr. Cullinan or his partner.”
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He tweeted backstage… a lot
Let's be honest: The part of the Oscars that no one really cares about is when the PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants come out to explain how the votes are counted. Yet, it is one of those very accountants who was responsible for the worst mix-up in Oscar history. Here's what we know about PwC accountant Brian Cullinan and what led to the moment that will live in Hollywood infamy.
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