Beauty queen Denise Garrido had a deja-vu watching the cringe-inducing moment of the wrong Miss Universe being crowned on Sunday.
The Ontarian knew host Steve Harvey is a comedian; so when he announced he’d read the ballot wrong, Garrido thought it was a joke. Her jaw dropped when she, along with millions of viewers and the girls on stage, realized it wasn’t.
“I was like, ‘It happened again!’”
In 2013, Garrido was named Miss Universe Canada. Then after she did a full day of photo shoots and interviews - organizers realized there had been a mistake.
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The pageant director told her in a private meeting that the numbers for the top five contestants got “jumbled.” So rather than being the winner, she was actually the third-runner up. Her initial reaction back then was also one of confusion. Garrido thought she wasn’t hearing him properly.
“I didn’t know if it was reality or a dream,” she recalls. “I was so stunned I was speechless.”
That shock soon turned to embarrassment.
“I had all these messages all over my Facebook: ‘Congrats, Denise! We’re so proud’
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“And to now go back and be like, ‘Oh, by the way,'” she says with a laugh. “‘That’s not the case anymore.'” “I didn’t know if it was reality or a dream,” she recalls. “I was so stunned I was speechless.”
She says she had only heard of something like this happening at a couple of small pageants. That is, until Sunday’s debacle.