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Some Guy Allegedly Stole Frances McDormand's Oscar and Pretended It Was His

Her Best Actress award was quite literally robbed.
Drew Schwartz
Brooklyn, US
Photo by Matt Petit/A.M.P.A.S via Getty Images

Aside from a surprising Best Original Screenplay award for Jordan Peele, Sufjan Stevens's fleeting, killer performance, and James Ivory's incredible Timothée Chalamet shirt, this year's Academy Awards were pretty unmemorable. According to the New York Times's Cara Buckley, the real drama went down at the afterparty—where, for a brief, terrifying moment, Frances McDormand's Best Actress Oscar went missing.

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The thing vanished from McDormand's side at the Governors Ball while she "had set it down and was chatting," Buckley reports. While Armie Hammer and Luca Guadagnino were busy hugging and Rita Moreno went to town on all the snacks, McDormand tried to track down the golden, dickless man she won for her turn in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Eventually, she gave up hope—"crying emotionally" outside the party before she left with her husband, Joel Coen, USA Today reports.

At some point, according to Buckley, a photographer for Wolfgang Puck (who catered the party) spotted some random guy trying to slip out with McDormand's award—which had been engraved with her name. The photographer reportedly grabbed it from the guy on his way out the door, but the mysterious thief managed to sneak back into the party.

By Sunday night, the LAPD had tracked down the alleged culprit—Terry Bryant—and arrested him on charges of felony grand theft, according to TMZ. The outlet also posted footage of the guy allegedly parading McDormand's Oscar around the afterparty, taking selfies with it and pretending he’d won it himself. “Who wants to tell me congratulations?” he asks in the video.

Ultimately, McDormand got her award back: A few hours after the actress split from the party, her rep told USA Today that "Fran and Oscar are happily reunited and are enjoying an In-N-Out burger together."

As if McDormand didn't already prove Sunday night that she's too pure for our world, she reportedly told security to let the alleged thief go, though apparently the cops decided to arrest someone anyway. You can't really blame them—lord knows no police department wants to wind up with a Three Billboards situation on its hands.

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