A little over two weeks ago, Steve Harvey made one of the most memorable mistakes a host could make by announcing the wrong winner at the 2015 Miss Universe pageant, and to this day people are still talking about the historic moment and what really caused him to read the wrong name on the card. Some people have said he may have skipped rehearsals while others claim it was all a huge publicity stunt, but Harvey finally spilt all the details about the epic mistake and shut down all of these allegations.
"First of all, I went to more rehearsals that I've ever gone to for anything," he said on the "Steve Harvey Morning Show" on Monday. "I was there for the entire dress rehearsal."
At the pageant, Harvey announced that the first runner-up, Miss Colombia won when really, Miss Philippines was the winner. Several minutes went by as they crowned Miss Colombia before Harvey realized his mistake.
He went on to explain that immediately after he announced who he thought was the winner, they asked everyone to come to a press conference. "I wasn't scheduled to be at a press conference," he continued to say. "So I went to the press conference and made all the apologies there. Now, what happened, how it got like that, how it was done, how it was worked on, that's neither here nor there. I said the name that was on the card. So when I walked off, everything was cool...and then, after that, all hell broke loose."
"All I heard people saying backstage was, 'That's the wrong name!'...All I hear is confusion backstage," he explained. "Now I'm standing here in the wing, so what I did was, I said, 'I gotta fix it.' Now I got a guy in my ear going, 'We gotta do something! We gotta do something!' That's all I'm hearing, utter confusion...So, I took it upon myself and walked out there to do something."
Harvey then owned up to his mistake on live television and even though this caused for an extremely awkward moment for Miss Colombia, it was the right thing to do.
"Did I make a mistake? Yes I did, wholeheartedly," he revealed. "And at this point in the game, I''m not in the finger-pointing business and rolling people under the bus. So, I did what I was trained to do by my father...You make a mistake and you own up to it. And I tried to fix it, I tried to fix it right there. Why would I wait...let's do it while we're here on TV. What could have happened, I could have just stayed back there and say, ya'll fix it. And then let them deal with it...but that ain't what my daddy raised me to do. So I owned up to it."
Harvey has had a chance to apologize to Miss Philippines, but not Miss Colombia, his only regret is for how he must have made her feel.
"I don't feel sorry for me, I don't feel sorry for the pageant - the pageant will now be bigger than it's ever been. My only regret is how this woman must have felt. And none of us can know what that is," Harvey explained. "I felt for her more than me, because, look I'm just a man, I'm out here, I ain't been waiting for all my life for this moment. When I did it, it was horrible for Miss Colombia...She's the only one I haven't had a chance to talk to...Now have I tried? Yes. But I haven't gotten a response."
Miss Colombia recently spoke out and admitted that the moment was very embarrassing for her, which is why she may not have responded to Harvey. "It was very humiliating for me," she said, as HNGN previously reported. "And for the whole country and for all the people not only from Colombia but the other Latinos that were in the auditorium."
A photo posted by Steve Harvey (@iamsteveharveytv) on Dec 20, 2015 at 9:19pm PST
