The Oscar for best short action film was announced by comedian and actor Kumail Nanjiani, who took the curveball in his stride.

“It’s a tie, I’m not joking, it’s actually a tie,” he declared, shocked. “Wow!” an audience member could be heard saying.

“Everyone calm down, we’re going to get through this, focus up,” Nanjiani told the laughing crowd, before saying he would announce one winner, let them have their moment, and then announce the other.

“Ironic that the short film Oscar’s going to take twice as long,” he joked.

The anticipation for the nominees to hear who else had won must have been palpable.

The Singers, an 18-minute musical comedy, was announced first.

The film is “a simple story about the power of music and art to bring us together in a moment when we live in an increasingly isolated world,” Davis said in his acceptance speech, joined by producer Jack Piatt.

Two People Exchanging Saliva, a 36-minute dystopian French-language film, saw co-directors Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh excitedly take to the stage.

Singh, who persisted with his acceptance speech even though the mic was cut and lights brought down, took a not-so-subtle jab at recent comments from Timothée Chalamet, prompting both laughs and jeers from the audience.

“We believe that art can change people’s souls… we can change society through art and creativity, through theatre and ballet,” he said.

“It’s such a dream,” Musteata told reporters afterwards.

The first time there was a tie at the Academy Awards was in 1932, when Fredric March and Wallace Beery shared the award for best actor.

But it wasn’t a true tie, because back then, if another nominee came within three votes of the winner, they too would be given an award (March had one more vote than Beery). The rules have since been changed.

The most controversial tie was between Katherine Hepburn for The Lion in Winter and Barbara Streisand for Funny Girl.

Although both were highly respected, Streisand had only just been admitted to the Academy. Usually, actors needed at least two film credits to join, but Academy president at the time, Gregory Peck, made an exception, citing her Tony-nomination on Broadway.

“Hello, Gorgeous,” Streisand famously said to her Oscar statue, echoing her first line in Funny Girl.