The ending of the Miss Universe competition in Las Vegas was anything but pretty last night (Dec. 20).
At the cap of the two-hour pageant, host Steve Harvey announced over a throbbing drumbeat the winner of the 2015 annual beauty pageant: Ariadna Gutierrez, representing Colombia.
Gutierrez took center stage and received the crown she had worked so hard to earn. Except it wasn’t hers. Harvey had botched the announcement. The real winner was Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach of the Philippines.
Not even the dazzling smiles on stage could mask the awkwardness. “I have to apologize,” Harvey said, before he announced Wurtzbach as the real winner. The music boomed and the audience applauded as if nothing had happened. But there’s no graceful way out of a gaffe like this.
Harvey quickly apologized publicly on Twitter.