An unexpected disaster happened at the Miss Universe pageant on Sunday night—when host Steve Harvey accidentally announced the wrong winner.
The final two contestants were Miss Philippines and Miss Colombia. Harvey accidentally announced that Miss Colombia had won. He stood silently, presumably figuring out how he was going to correct things, as Miss Colombia was crowned and blew kisses to the audiences.
Finally, Harvey goes up to the Colombia beauty queen and tells her about his mistake.
The broadcast ended with pageant officials taking the crown off Miss Colombia’s head, and putting it on the head of the new Miss Universe: Miss Philippines, Pia Alonzo. Miss Colombia was the first runner-up.
Steve Harvey, for his part, feels terrible.
In a tweet after the fact—which was soon deleted—he said, “I want to apologize emphatically to Miss Philippians [sic] and Miss Columbia [sic]. This was a terribly honest human mistake and I am so regretful.”
The pageant was formerly owned by Donald Trump’s Trump Organization.
Formerly a 50-50 joint venture between Trump and NBC, Trump bought NBC’s stake in the pageant after NBC decided to end their business relationship with the controversial Republican frontrunner, after he made unflattering statements about illegal immigrants from Mexico.
Trump, after briefly owning the entire pageant, sold it earlier this year.
NBC has since walked back its plans to cut out Trump, at least somewhat: Trump was a guest host on NBC’s Saturday Night Live in November, leading to a massive ratings hit. But even though Trump doesn’t own the pageant anymore, they seem to have lost out on Miss Universe for the foreseeable future: the pageant aired on Fox, not NBC, on Sunday night.
Trump, for his part, couldn’t help but twist the knife a little, on how he was much better at managing the pageant.
“Very sad what happened last night at the Miss Universe Pageant. I sold it 6 months ago for a record price. This would never have happened!” he said via Twitter.
Watch the video here.
