Steve Harvey's right: Philippines, not Malaysia, won National Costume at Miss Universe 2019
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 9 — Miss Universe clarified in a tweet that the winner of the Miss Universe 2019 National Costume is the Philippines, not Malaysia as previously announced.
Earlier during the pageant, Steve Harvey was thought to have accidentally read out the wrong winner, leading Miss Universe Malaysia Shweta Sekhon to correct the host.
At that point, Harvey told Shweta and the audience that he was merely reading from the teleprompter.
It turned out he was right after all.
The winner of the National Costume category is Miss Universe Philippines Gazini Ganados.
.@IAmSteveHarvey had it right: Miss Universe Philippines Gazini Ganados is the winner of the #MissUniverse2019 National Costume competition! Congratulations, Gazini. 🎉 pic.twitter.com/L8DpAyNL9I
— Miss Universe (@MissUniverse) December 9, 2019
Disappointed pageant fans have taken to Twitter to voice their discontent over the blunder that robbed Ganados of her winning moment and Shweta’s short-lived victory.
Gazini deserve a moment to receive her award.😔 To be fair, I think it’s not Steve Harvey’s fault this time.
— rovi kristel☘️ (@callmeROVI) December 9, 2019
How unprofessional this organizer is. Doing it again just to trend. What a shame! ONCE is enough. But doing it for the SECOND time? And ON PURPOSE? Care to explain?
— Prinjay (@PrinJayme) December 9, 2019
According to entertainment news site Deadline, a Miss Universe pageant insider said Shweta “wasn’t aware we’d be announcing Philippines first, so she jumped the gun when Harvey started with that news,” the insider was quoted as saying.
“Harvey made a joke of it, but no mistakes regarding the national costume winner were made by him, the prompter or production.”
Other observers said Ganados was on stage at the time for the Top 20 and couldn’t be interviewed so Malaysia’s national costume was given a spotlight instead.
Steve announced it right during the show. He said Ms Philippines won the NatCos Award but because she was included in the Top 20 and cant wear the costume for an interview, they just invited Malaysia onstage to kind of show her costume too. Maybe she was the 1st runner up
— L (@Shmib2) December 9, 2019
No offense to both girls, but this is just unprofessional coming from Miss Universe organization.
— Alya (@alyaaaazizah) December 9, 2019
With my respect to @IAmSteveHarvey
I wish @MissUniverse should hold a press conference awarding Miss Philippines Gazini the award she truly deserves. This is unfair. It should be her time to shine that moment. I'm very disappointed!— echo (@iamweirdo000) December 9, 2019
The clip of Harvey interviewing Shweta which was shared on Twitter earlier today has been removed from the Miss Universe official Twitter page.
In 2015, Harvey wrongly announced the wrong winner during the pageant.
The 62-year-old host read out Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutiérrez as the winner instead of the Philippines’ Pia Wurtzbach.
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