Entertainment
The Rock Shares His Perspective On Envelopegate
Since the whacky events at the 2017 Academy Awards on Sunday night, everyone from the Academy Award stage manager to Matt Damon has given their two cents on the world’s most influential envelope swap. In case you missed the endless memes or the event itself, the low-down is that presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway initially announced the wrong film, La La Land as the Best Picture winner, instead of the actual winner, Moonlight — and low-key chaos ensued. Perhaps one of the most hilarious of the reactions is Dwayne Johnson’s perspective of the event. On Tuesday, Feb. 28, the Rock shared what really happened during envelopegate— at least from where he was sitting.
The Moana star took to Instagram to post a photo of an audience reaction to the award show slip-up. The image features the shocked faces of The Rock, alongside several other celebs including Meryl Streep, Salma Hayek, Michelle Williams, etc., as they take in what’s going on. They, like the rest of us, look like they’ve never seen such a thing (which is true, this is the first slip-up of its kind for the Oscars). The expression on the former professional wrestler’s face is almost cartoonish — you can practically hear a Scooby-Doo style “Zoinks!” Alongside the hilarious photo, Johnson shared an extra-long caption with a perfect play-by-play of what went down.
This is the image he shared, which fans began circulating as well:
The actor described how the wheels were “spinnin’” on whether he “should hit the stage and take down an Oscars producer” who “went rogue” to take away La La Land’s Best Picture Oscar moment à la Kanye West circa the 2009 MTV VMAs. He included the hashtags, “#IWasReadyToGoHobbs” and “#MattDamonWasReadyToGoBourne.”
He recounts exclaiming, “What the f*cks he doing?" when the cooler head of his partner, Lauren Hashian, realized, “Oh my God, they made a mistake."
Johnson went on to salute the leadership of La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz during the incident and wrote, “In crazy moments like that, we need leaders to step up and take charge…” He commended Horowitz’s choice to call the Moonlight cast and crew up so they could make their speeches. He finished with the humorous sentiment, “Thankfully, Jordan gave us the clarity we needed, because as much as I love and adore Meryl, I was willing to rumble over her to take down the producer going rogue.”
It’s a good thing Johnson didn’t decide to "hit the stage," because what ended up ensuing was a delightful display of the spontaneity and improvisation needed in “the biz.” As Johnson fondly opines in his post, “no business like show business.” He’s not wrong.
