'Moana' Star Auli'i Cravalho Confirms Oscars Head-Bonking Incident, Shows Off Bump


Lost in the wake of Oscars’ so-called Envelopegate was another, albeit lesser, show snafu: Moana star Auli’i Cravalho taking a shot to head from one of her color guard-esque backup dancers during her show-stopping performance of Best Original Song nominee “How Far I’ll Go.” While it’s tough to see on replay, Cravalho now reveals she wasn’t merely hit on the head with a flag — but the actual flagpole. And she’s still got the bump on her head to prove it.

“It was like [thumping sound], you’re at the Oscars!” the 16-year-old breakout told Yahoo Movies during a Facebook Live interview Tuesday, even inviting host Kevin Polowy to “feel the moment” (meaning the bump). “It was very real.”

Worse yet, Cravalho said it wasn’t the first time. She was also bonked on the head during her Oscar prep. “We had practiced it over and over and over again, and then the day before we had our first dress rehearsal. It was like a really big thing. And that was the first time I got a slight bump on the head.”

Related: Oscars 2017: The Highs, the Lows, and What Just Happened?

The first time was bad enough that Cravalho got checked for a concussion by an EMT on site. “And so we all congregated together afterwards and it was, ‘OK, someone hit me on the head.’ [They laughed], like, ‘Super sorry, but it will never happen again.’ But as we know, it did.”

Cravalho also described what it was like to be in the Dolby Theatre when “chaos” erupted after presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway mistakenly awarded La La Land the Best Picture Oscar, only to see that film’s acceptance speeches interrupted by the revelation that the real winner was Moonlight.

“I thought the La La Land [team] handled it so graciously,” she said. “Both films were so incredibly important. Both of them told such heartfelt stories. It was really wonderful to see how one [film] could literally pass an Oscar to the other.”

Moana is now available on Digital HD and will be released on Blu-ray, DVD and on-demand March 7.

Watch the full Facebook Live interview with Auli’i Cravalho:

Yahoo Movies

Moana star Auli'i Cravalho is live with our Kevin Polowy — Ask your questions now!

Posted by Yahoo Movies on Tuesday, February 28, 2017