No flash: WSU, EWU grad Blanca Blanco says Oscars red carpet snafu wasn’t as it appeared

Sure, the biggest flub at the Oscars on Sunday may have been the snafu over the best picture award, but an actress with Eastern Washington roots is getting credit for the biggest fashion flub on the red carpet.

Blanca Blanco, who has appeared in “Showgirls 2” and “Teen Star Academy,” walked the red carpet into the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday wearing a gold dress with a long slit up the thigh. Too long a slit, it appears, as at one point Blanco appeared to expose her lady parts for the assembled crowds and photographers.

The internet and the British tabloids had a field day – such as the Sun with this headline, “Flashion faux pas: Oscars 2017 guest Blanca Blanco suffers epic disaster as she goes knickerless on the red carpet.” Blanco told the Daily Mail that all was not as it appeared, and no one saw anything inappropriate.

“I had a bodysuit on, it was like a swimsuit, for some reason the pictures are looking like I have nothing,” she told DailyMail.com. “It was a nude color, it matches my skin, so I wasn’t naked.”

Blanco, 36, was born in California and raised in Chelan, Washington, where she graduated from Chelan High School in 1999. According to her biography on www.imdb.com, she earned an associate’s degree from Spokane Falls Community College, then earned a bachelor’s in psychology at Washington State University and a master’s in social work from Eastern Washington University.

Blanco, who attended the ceremony with her longtime beau and frequent co-star John Savage (“The Deer Hunter,” “The Thin Red Line”), told the Daily Mail she was embarrassed by the situation.

“The Oscars is a very important event and it is my dream to someday be there as a nominee and I respect the Oscars,” she said. “I would not think of just going naked.”

According to the Mail, Blanco didn’t realize she’d made a scene until halfway through the ceremony, when her phone started blowing up with messages. As soon as the ceremony was over, she texted her mother to assure her she hadn’t been naked under the dress.

Blanco and a friend designed her gown with an eye toward getting on a best dressed list.

“I think maybe I wouldn’t have had the split as high,” she told the Mail.

She did, by the way, make at least one best dressed list: Vogue Espana listed her at No. 50 on their 75 best dressed list.

The magazine wrote (translated from Spanish), “Latin actress Blanca Blanco has worn a yellow dress with rhinestone embroidery and an infinite side opening. Pure old Hollywood style.”