You can suck up to Beyonce all you want. But if Bey doesn’t want to come to your event,it’s not happening.
TIME Magazine put Beyonce on their cover last week and named her the Most Powerful something in the world. It was all to promote the TIME 100. But at last night’s dinner reception for the annual issue, Ms. Knowles was too busy to put on a frock and come uptown.
Mind you, Beyonce is not on tour and doesn’t live in New York.
From the looks of things, a lot of the TIME 100 didn’t show up. Pharrell did, because he was paid, and he played, for the audience.
The writers of the song “Frozen” came, because seriously, that’s the last we’re going to hear from them.
Most of the Hollywood crowd stayed away, too. Amy Adams made it. But Matthew McConaughey and Kerry Washington were AWOL, as were Robert Redford, Miley Cyrus, and Benedict Cumberbatch, Robin Wright, and Oscar winning director Steve McQueen.
Also missing: President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Vladimir Putin, and Angela Merkel. They did manage to get New York senator Kristen Gillibrand and Senator Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Kim Jung Un sent his regrets.
Why keep giving this event if few show up? Publicity and promotion. But most of the guests who did attend were “New York fillers”: celebs who live here anyway, and look like they’ve been plucked from a movie premiere list. They aren’t on the TIME100. But they don’t need a hotel room. Seriously: Ronan Farrow? Rand Paul? Padma Lakshmi?
Nothing compares to TIME’s 75th anniversary bash at Radio City eons ago, May 1998. Joe DiMaggio, Muhammad Ali, Henry Kissinger, Dr. Kevorkian, Kurt Vonnegut, loads of movie stars like Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, Mary Tyler Moore, Mel Brooks all in black tie. Those were the days, my friend. Those were the days.
At least Seth Meyers got to poke fun at the crowd:
