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Original plan was to crop Meryl Streep out of the famous Oscars selfie

Los Angeles – It was supposed to be a selfie with just Meryl Streep and Ellen DeGeneres.

The original plan was to take the snap and then crop Meryl’s head out of the pic before tweeting it out to the world.

But things don’t always go according to plan during a live TV broadcast.

In a rather fortunate sequence of events more A-listers jumped in and drastically increased the star power of the now famous Twitter-breaking selfie.

According to E! News Ellen DeGeneres revealed the original plan behind the selfie pic at the Governors Ball after the prestigious Oscars ceremony.

During a conversation with Bradley Cooper, who can also be seen in the photo, the 56-year-old comedian revealed that the scripted plan was to take the selfie in such a way that Meryl’s head would have been cropped out.

"That was going to be the joke," she revealed. "But it doesn't matter. It was just great."

By Monday afternoon, the selfie had been retweeted some 2.8 million times, shattering the previous record of 810 000 retweets for the photo of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama hugging after the 2012 election.

Twitter was humming at 254 644 tweets per minute after DeGeneres' request, and the company said the crush disrupted service for 20 minutes.

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