Steve Harvey Finally Breaks Silence Over Miss Universe Flub

Steve Harvey finally broke his silence after his 2015 Miss Universe flub where he accidentally announced Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutierrez as the winner instead of the real winner Miss Philippines Pia Wurtzbach.

“Immediately after it happened, they asked the pageant people to come to the press conference,” the 58-year-old TV host said on his morning show on Monday (January 4). “I wasn’t scheduled to be at a press conference, so I went to the press conference and made all the apologies there…Here’s the situation: Now, when the mistake was made, when I said the wrong woman’s name, I can only give information I had. No one knows, and that information is not in the teleprompter because you’ve got two women standing there. I read what was on the teleprompter, then I read what was on the card.”

“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. When I walked off, everything was cool…and then, after that, all hell broke loose,” Steve continued. “All I heard was people say, ‘That’s the wrong name,’” he recalled. “And all I hear is confusion backstage. Now I’m standing here in the wing, so what I did was, ‘I gotta go fix it.’ Now I got a guy in my ear going, ‘We gotta do something! We gotta do something!’”

Click inside to read the rest of Steve Harvey’s account of what happened…

“Did I make a mistake? Yes I did, wholeheartedly. 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. When I did it, it was horrible for Miss Colombia. And she’s the only one I haven’t had a chance to talk to,” the host revealed. “I’ve had a chance to talk to Miss Philippines. I’ve talked to all the pageant people. I’ve talked to people backstage. Even me and the director had a long talk. But I haven’t been able to reach out and talk to Miss Colombia. Now, have I tried? Yes. But haven’t gotten a response. How this must have made the woman from Colombia [feel]… I felt for her more than me. I could’ve just stayed back there and said, ‘Y’all fix it.’ 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.”