Most of the men were dressed in tuxedos. Williams shined in a gold trimmed dress. Paul Bettany wore a black Chairman Mao-style shirt. Jaden Smith wore jeans, apparently missing the black tie memo.
Kimmel, decked out in a perfectly tailored black tuxedo, had some ground rules as the emcee. Guests were expected to wash their dishes. No pets, except service animals, “which we know none of them really are.” “And absolutely no sitting naked on the furniture or on Chef José Andrés.”
Chesky, who hardlaunched his relationship with girlfriend designer Carly Helfrich on the red carpet, delivered his remarks with the cadence of Vanessa Bayer’s Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy Saturday Night Live character, staring down at the teleprompter positioned on the floor. “People are fundamentally good,” he declared, explaining that Airbnb’s business would have never worked otherwise.
On the red carpet, I asked Chesky whether the Trump administration had made it harder for his nonprofit to house people fleeing tragedy. “No, absolutely not,” he insisted, describing emergency housing as a cause that transcends partisan politics. This was a rather diplomatic answer from a man whose company once ran advertisements welcoming refugees in pointed opposition to Trump’s 2017 Muslim travel ban. But Chesky wasn’t taking the bait. “This is a very united kind of issue,” he said.
The night took an emotional turn when Kimmel talked about his son Billy’s three open-heart surgeries before introducing a video of a young boy receiving cancer treatments who was the beneficiary of the charity’s efforts. At that moment, the child, who was in attendance with his mom and grandma, stood on his chair and made a heart symbol using his two hands. The crowd went wild.
Andrés, whose name appeared on the menu but who was rather noncommittal when asked whether he had actually designed it, insisted that the evening’s charitable mission was more than an excuse for Hollywood to get dressed up.
By dessert, Kimmel was shaking down the wealthy guests. “Don’t cheap out,” he warned, noting that anyone who could afford the new folding iPhone (which retails at $2,000) could surely spare $110 to provide a family with a night of emergency housing. He also accidentally revealed the evening’s secret musical guest: Charli xcx.
“Oh shit!” he exclaimed, realizing his mistake. “Okay, it’s not a surprise anymore.”
Charli eventually took the stage, with will.i.am and Greta Lee dancing from the front row. “That was soooooo good,” Lee said to me on the way out.
And although the set wasn’t particularly long, Charli rocked it, sending heads banging everywhere. She got the Hollywood room doing what it does best: partying for a cause.
