Time 100 pulls in record number of honorees
Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez delivered an extra jolt of celebrity buzz to the annual Time 100 bash on Tuesday — with J.Lo closing the night with a four-song set.
Earlier, three Pulitzer Prize-winners who were honored for their groundbreaking stories on sexual harassment and five young survivors of the Parkland school shootings added a more somber tone than usual to the red-carpet event.
At the same time, tech titans, who had turned up in force in years past, were scarce this year as newsmakers in the supercharged political arena seemed to dominate the magazine’s annual list — and the evening’s attendees.
And, of course, hanging over the event was uncertainty over who will emerge as a buyer for the 95-year-old title now that Meredith has absorbed the old Time Inc. and is selling off Time and three other iconic brands — Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money — it inherited.
Meredith is hoping to sell the multimillion-dollar quartet in the next 120 days. With the pending sales, there is the possibility that the star-studded red carpet event last night at Jazz at Lincoln Center could be the last.
Perhaps that was why a record number of honorees — 49 — out of the Time 100 most influential people in the world actually were able to make it to the dinner this year.
Keeping with the serious tone, Tarana Burke, an activist who is credited with starting the #MeToo movement more than a decade ago — before there was even a hash tag — was front and center at Table 3. Comedian Keegan-Michael Key, who most recently starred in “Meteor Shower” on Broadway, shared the table and helped lighten the mood.
Among the few tech titans attending was Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, sharing time with former Vanity Fair Editor Tina Brown (author of “The Vanity Fair Diaries”) and journalist hubby Sir Harry Evans (author of “Do I Make Myself Clear?”) at Table 1.
While Table 1 on tier one is no doubt a choice seat, careful readers of Media Ink know that in the hierarchy of Time 100, it is actually Table 8, on the second tier, that is considered the best seat in the house.
That’s where actress Nicole Kidman was breaking bread with Hoda Kotb, the co-host of NBC’s “Today,” and human rights activist Nice Leng’ete, along with Time Editor-in-Chief Ed Felsenthal and his boss, Tom Harty, president and CEO of Meredith.
Savannah Guthrie, another co-host of “Today,” held down nearby second-tier Table 10, where she clearly had a serious talk with Kenneth Frazier, the CEO of Merck — who quit an advisory council set up by President Trump over the commander-in-chief’s remarks about the violence in Charlottesville, Va. Trump, who attended the Time event in 2016 and was one of the top 100 again this year, didn’t make the scene. He was hosting his first state dinner, for French President Emmanuel Macron, in Washington, DC.
Table 9 drew Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon, who chatted with Lena Waithe, the actress and screenwriter of the Netflix hit “Master of None,” singer Kesha, who has been speaking out about her own sexual harassment, and Norah O’Donnell, co-host of “CBS This Morning.”
And at Table 7, “The People vs. OJ Simpson” actor Sterling K. Brown got to hobnob with the highest-paid actress in India, Deepika Padukone, and “CBS This Morning” co-host Gayle King.
There were undoubtedly some strange conversations on Table 13, where Millie Bobby Brown, the young actress who played the character Eleven in “Stranger Things,” was dining with “Lady Bird” writer and director Greta Gerwig and a last-minute addition, Christopher Wylie, a whistleblower on the Facebook data-mining scandal at Cambridge Analytica.
Having a Pulitzer to your name didn’t mean you avoided the third-tier, aka Siberia. Ronan Farrow, whose stories in The New Yorker on the alleged decades-long sexual predatory behavior of Hollywood’s pervy producer, Harvey Weinstein, was up on Table 19, breaking bread with yours truly and his mom, Mia Farrow. Ronan, one of the Time 100, toasted Emily Nestor, his guest who was also one of the first on-the-record sources for his award-winning stories.
New York Times reporter Megan Twohey, who shared a Pulitzer for stories on sexual harassment with Times colleague Jodi Kantor, landed Table 21. Kantor was at Table 23 — where two of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students, David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, sat. Other Parkland survivors, Cameron Kasky, Alex Wind and Jaclyn Corin, were at Table 24. All the students made the Time 100 list for their role in the March for Our Lives event to halt gun violence.
For humor, there was the original “Wonder Woman” star Lynda Carter, on Table 20. She penned a tribute in the issue to the new big-screen superhero, Gal Gadot.
Keeping with one of the overriding themes, Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman, who spoke out against convicted pedophile Larry Nassar, was at Table 16. She had penned a tribute to Rachel Denhollander, the first to speak out against Nassar.
Carmen Yulin Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, scored a not-so-bad Table 15 alongside Megyn Kelly.