Behind the Scenes of Evan's "Chaos Dinner"
“Let’s see if we can do something iconic.”
“What exactly is this?” That’s pretty much what everyone would ask when I’d slide into their DMs or voice text an invitation to my “Chaos Dinner,” as we were calling it. We were building a bridge to a land unfamiliar. Each RSVP was another brick cemented. What was on the other side? I guess we’d find out. Michael Hoffman, Public Figure Programs Lead at Meta, first came to me in September with a vision for a dinner hosted by me celebrating the great figures that so often populate my grid on Instagram. What unfolded on November 15th, 2023 surpassed my wildest dreams of what this dinner could be. I’m still in awe that it happened; that for a moment in time, Sarah Michelle Gellar was in conversation with Trixie Mattel to my left and Jonathan Anderson was in conversation with Kathy Hilton on my right. Somehow, it just worked.
"It was a no-brainer partnering with Evan for the Chaos Dinner. He is the embodiment of pop culture across our platforms and we wanted to celebrate that,” Vice President of Strategic Partnerships Charles Porch tells me. “As we think about the future of Threads, we believe it's important to embrace the folks that drive conversation and we all know Evan is the king of that!"
Creating the first of something like this is a strangely high-wire act — at least it felt like that for me. It’s one thing to get folks to comment or show love for you in an interview; it’s wholly another to get them out of the house and into a room with little understanding as to what they were walking into. “Polite pass,” wrote Harris Dickinson’s team in response to the invite. I get it. An honest-to-goodness hat tip to this group of people who largely just said “yes” with a real fancy-free approach to their night.
I try to be that way, too, and I envy it so much in others. Some of the best nights of my life — many, really — have been predicated on me not knowing what I was getting myself into.
I’ve always been very enamored with the lore behind Jennifer Coolidge’s storied Halloween parties, held annually at her home in New Orleans (famously used as part of the set of Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled). I’d heard from many past attendees who spoke of it as you would speak about the yearly meeting of a secret society. It was always qualified as the best event of the year, but little could be discerned about what went on there. Then I went, and acutely understood the preciousness surrounding the great mystery of what’s inside.
I’m reminded (sorry, but I am) of “What’s Inside” from Sara Bareilles’s Waitress. “What's inside?/Everyone wants to know what's inside.” That, I thought to myself. I want to create that. I want to craft my own lore.
Here’s a little bit of what went into creating, I kid you not, one of the most exhilarating nights of my life.
What exactly was it? It had to be a sit-down dinner. We floated the idea of a passed apps moment, but the vision had really begun with Carrie Bradshaw’s last supper in the Season 2 finale of And Just Like That… on the vision board. From there, we thought of other dinner parties — The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’s “Dinner Party From Hell,” the dinner party episode of The Office, The Bear’s “Fishes” episode — and the idea of them as a catalyst for bringing together all of these disparate parts.
The pressure! It had to be a dinner party. It had to be coursed. The amuse bouche had to be a Cristalino martini.
Everything had to have purpose. Lucky for me, we brought on Eric Tremble, the owner/CEO of Avenge Creative. When the forecast called for rain the week before the event, Tremble sprung into action.
“I called Julia at Slate PR and we talked through every possible scenario with and without a tent and decided that we needed to at least get one on hold and make sure we had one since I was hearing all other events around town were starting to put them on hold.” I’m impressed at the mere forethought! But Tremble wasn’t just concerned about keeping guests dry; he was also concerned with aesthetic cohesion. “I called our drape vendor, Stitch, and begged him to help us dress the tent up to match the overall aesthetic of the dinner. In the end, we all felt the tent made the dinner even more intimate and actually worked to our benefit. It made it that much more cozy and kept the party guests together as opposed to spread across the backyard.”
This was a night celebrating pop culture, which meant it wasn’t just about the guest list. It was about details. The cocktail menu, courtesy of Diageo, included The Moment, Mother, Hold All My Calls and Pre-Shaking. (I love a cocktail menu at an event with more than three options.)
The napkins were Gywneth Paltrow ski trial-themed. The place cards were all memes as well. The gift bag included the My Hand In Yours wind chime (now called the Dorit “Chic” wind chime), the Selena Gomez blanket, Loewe’s new tomato leaves liquid soap, a Saint Jennifer Coolidge prayer candle, naturally — all within a tote bag that read: “The Ludicrously Capacious Tote Bag.”
And of course, there was the collab of the season on hand: The Caviar Co. x Pringles.
Even my thank-you notes have Nicole Kidman’s AMC ad as the back side!
I’ve never given a speech in my life. I should have been nervous. I’m nervous when I think about it in retrospect. But honestly, in the moment, it simply never occurred to me. You could call it fearlessness, ignorance or stupidity, really, but I try not to live with imposter syndrome or allow myself an “I don’t belong here.” Believe me, it’s not that I don’t feel those things. I just try really hard not to allow them to pervade my experience. There’s a part of me that is terrified at the thought of getting up in front of people and having the spotlight on me. But I think there’s another part — no telling how they vary in size when compared — that feels capable, especially when speaking from my heart.
My speech:
“I’ve always been a speech receiver, never a speech giver, so I’m excited to try this on. Thank you all so very much for being here. I’m deeply, deeply honored. A lot of people when we told them about this dinner kept saying, ‘What is this?’ And I don’t know if we fully landed that until right now, which is that it’s this: an assemblage of great figures in pop culture. I’ve been a consumer, lover and fan of pop culture from the womb-ish — y’know, early on. It’s always been something I love and a driving force for me. And thanks to Meta, Instagram and Threads, I’ve been able to turn that passion into a career. I really do feel like it all began there, and it has springrolled…springboarded?”
[Sarah Michelle Gellar interjects: “Not spring rolls!”]
“There have been spring rolls! But yes, springboarded into whatever this is. So I just am so grateful to you all for being here. Thank you to Meta, Instagram and Threads for providing me with this platform. I know people talk about the toxicity of social media a lot. I have found a lot of greatness on social media and made real connections and real friends and real meaningful career opportunities have spawned from there. I obviously want to thank Crystal Kung Minkoff for giving us access to this beautiful home. I want to thank the many people that worked on this event. As you can imagine, there are so many people here that came together; there were Zoom calls and many long hours and I’m eternally grateful. And I just want to say to the person on my left here: There is one person that’s always inspired me, the very first person I ever was a fan of and the person I will be a fan of until the very end: my #1, Sarah Michelle Gellar. Thank you!”
I worked very hard to stay myself the entire night. It can be hard at what at the end of the day is an industry event to not feel the need to be “on.” I’m always thinking about Lady Gaga’s Vogue 73 questions video in which the interviewer asks her, “Do you feel like there’s pressure to constantly be ‘on’?” Her response: “I don’t really know what being ‘on’ means.” It’s a question I try and ask in some way or another during a lot of my interviews. I’ve long been fascinated about the act of being famous and what the output of that “being” is. Please don’t interpret this as me suddenly fancying myself a famous person, but when you’re in a room full of them, it can be easy to take on the energy they emanate. For me, the effort lies in never leaving my body. I’ll give you a for instance. On Friday, when I interviewed Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott (interview dropping here next week!), I fully left my body. When I go back and watch the footage, it’s like I’m watching the interview as an audience member, not the interviewee. I’ll work on that next time: staying more present. In that moment, I failed. But at the Chaos Dinner, I managed to really be there, and not just physically.
I’d also like to take a moment to thank the Meta team: VP of Strategic Partnerships Charles Porch, VP of Product Emily Dalton Smith, VP of Global Partnerships Sibyl Goldman, Director of Strategic Partnerships Claudine Cazian, Public Figure Programs Lead Michael Hoffman and my Strategic Partnerships Manager Carly Coelet. I’d like to thank Andy Gelb, Julia Rossen and Kami Davis at Slate PR for hustling for us, Saturn Rising for DJing, Chef Michael Reed and his wife Kwini Reed for providing us with the delicious eats and The Petal Workshop for the gorgeous flowers.
“All of these people being together in a room makes sense because Katz writes about and openly obsesses over all of them. They’re pop-culture headline makers, and this party, since it was partly put on by Meta, was crafted to be a headline. It worked. Ryan Reynolds could only dream of crafting such a successful publicity stunt. What did Evan Ross Katz’s dinner party have that Bethenny Frankel’s lacked? Self-awareness and a sense of humor." — Pajiba
I of course had to procure a quote from Jessel “TriBeCa is really up and coming” Taank to summarize the evening: “The Chaos Dinner was clearly a melding of pop culture disruptors and shakers. My most fabulous run-in had to be Kathy Hilton. I’m going to hit her up for a suite upgrade today ;-).”
I can’t believe we managed to pull this off. And something tells me there’s more chaos ahead.
I am obsessed and inspired to bring this to the UK. You are a genius. X
This is so dope! Congrats! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾