The US Open Quietly Became the Best Red Carpet of the Month
August's most reliable step-and-repeat was not a premiere or a gala, it was a tennis tournament in Flushing, and the guest list explains why.
Look at where people actually turned up in August and a pattern emerges that nobody planned. Between August 26 and the end of the month, the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing hosted Travis Scott, Emma Roberts, Tate McRae, Gayle King, Maura Higgins, Serena Williams and all four members of Little Big Town.
That is a better and stranger line-up than most film premieres managed, and none of them were there to promote anything.
Tate McRae arrived for day one on August 30. Travis Scott watched a match on the 31st. Emma Roberts came on the 30th, the same day Kimberly Schlapman, Philip Sweet, Karen Fairchild and Jimi Westbrook took in play from a suite, and the same day Gayle King spoke at the USTA Foundation Gala. Serena Williams turned up on the 26th and surprised fans as part of a ticket campaign. Coco Gauff marked a banking partnership at Casa Tua in the city.
Why sport wins the month
The appeal is structural. A premiere requires you to have a film coming out, arrive within a scheduled window, and answer questions about the film. A tournament requires a seat.
The dressing follows the same logic. Nothing has to be a Look, because nobody is being photographed against a branded wall at a fixed moment. The pictures are candid by construction, taken across hours rather than minutes, and the resulting images have a naturalism that a step-and-repeat is structurally incapable of producing.
For anyone in the business of being photographed, that is close to ideal. All of the reach, almost none of the exposure.
A premiere requires a film. A tournament requires a seat
The film people were working
Elsewhere the month ran on a more traditional schedule, and it ran hard.
Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock turned up at Hollywood Forever Cemetery to introduce a Cinespia screening of Practical Magic, the 1998 original, which was a genuinely charming piece of nostalgia and also an efficient plug for the sequel arriving in September. Their co-stars Joey King and Maisie Williams joined them. Kidman and Bullock were back on the carpet on August 31 for the sequel's Los Angeles premiere at the Directors Village.
Charlize Theron and Matt Damon took the Odyssey press tour to Seoul for a press conference and premiere. Manny Jacinto appeared at a DreamWorks Animation screening of Forgotten Island at the Pacific Design Center on August 28.
And Tom Cruise went to Daytona International Speedway on August 29 for the NASCAR Coke Zero Sugar 400, hours after reports that he and Anne Hathaway will star in a sequel to Days of Thunder. Whether or not that timing was a coincidence, it was very good work.
Madonna, and one genuinely surprising booking
Madonna opened the month with another Club Confessions appearance, this time performing at WorldPride in Amsterdam, with Kylie Minogue turning up as a surprise guest. Two of the most durable pop careers of the last forty years, on one stage, at a Pride event, is not a thing that needed to happen and was obviously going to be the best photograph of the week.
Olivia Rodrigo played the Daisy Chain Fields Festival at the Great Park in Irvine on August 29. Andrew Watt performed at a foundation golf event at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks on the 31st.
The parties worth noticing
The smaller rooms did better than usual.
Kim Kardashian and Wilmer Valderrama attended the This Is About Humanity Soiree in Hollywood on August 29. Ashlyn Harris and Sophia Bush went to a Camp FoundRae event at The Crow's Nest in Montauk, where the jewellery label's founder and creative director Beth Hutchens was photographed laughing with Julianne Moore and Katie Couric. Carole Radziwill and Romilly Newman went to a reading held on the Wavertree tall ship in New York on the 26th.
Maluma joined the inaugural class of a Hot Wheels campaign in Los Angeles on the 27th, which is a sentence that requires no further comment.
The one that lingers is Seal, photographed on August 31 in New York visiting a twelve-foot sculpture by Brendan Murphy, dedicated to a nonprofit working on youth mental health and resilience. No carpet, no premiere, no product.
That is roughly the shape of the month. The scheduled events delivered what they were designed to deliver. The best pictures came from a tennis tournament, a cemetery screening and a man looking at a very large bear.
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