Jennifer Lopez, Kathryn Hahn, and More Turn Out to VF and Amazon MGM Studios’ Awards Season Party

’Twas the night before the Golden Globes, and the season’s brightest stars had come to celebrate at Vanity Fair and Amazon MGM Studios’ Awards Season Celebration.

The exclusive Saturday event welcomed VIPs from the best of film and television, many of whom were Golden Globe nominees looking forward to attending the year’s first big award show. Attendees included Jennifer Lopez and her Unstoppable costar, Jharrel Jerome, Hiroyuki Sanada, Kate Beckinsale, Abbot Elementary’s Janelle James, Heidi and Leni Klum, Jodie Foster, Hard Truths star Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Paris, Nicky, and Kathy Hilton, Kathryn Hahn, Fortune Feimster, Danielle Pinnock, Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Sosie Bacon, A Complete Unknown and Nightbitch star Scoot McNairy, Chace Crawford, Fallout creator/director Jonathan Nolan and star Aaron Moten, All We Imagine as Light director and nominee Payal Kapadia, and many more.

First-time nominee Richard Gadd told VF he has been overwhelmed by the continued positive reactions to Baby Reindeer, which he created, wrote, and stars in. The limited series is up for three Globes Sunday night.

“I’m very grateful for the way the show’s been received. It’s been a crazy rollercoaster, but it’s the stuff dreams are made of,” he said. “So I’m really just very grateful and happy to be here.”

The Scottish actor claimed that he’s not recognized very much at the moment, because “I’ve grown a beard now and I’ve put on a bit of weight”—and those who do approach him do not know his name. “People usually come up to me and say, ‘Are you Baby Reindeer?’ They never call me Donny Dunn or Richard Gadd. It’s always ‘Baby Reindeer,’” he said with a laugh. “But they usually just say nice things about the show.”

Another first-timer Cristin Milioti—nominated for her acclaimed villainous performance in The Penguin—said she is looking forward to reuniting with her cast at the show and having the opportunity to celebrate one another.

“It’s so fun to put on a dress and sit with my cast and our showrunner to celebrate, because this is, in a way, how we’re toasting what we made. You don’t always get to do that,” she said. Even so, Milioti is still adjusting to getting actual awards attention for her work. “People’s responses have meant a lot. It’s very overwhelming in the best way, but it’s nice when you make something that you love and it’s received with love.”

Professional boxer turned actor and True Detective: Night Country star Kali Reis is the third Indigenous woman ever to be nominated for a Golden Globe, an honor she does not take lightly.

“Lily Gladstone was here a year ago, you know what I mean? So to be walking through that door and to have the opportunity to celebrate all these amazing names and artists, these stories, all together, it feels like a really open time,” she said. “I feel really supported. So I’m really excited about tomorrow.”

And no matter who is officially awarded the trophy, Reis—who made history with Gladstone as the first two women of Native American descent to receive Emmy nominations last September—is gratified by the positive reactions she’s received from women native to the area depicted in Night Country.

“The reaction I’ve gotten from the Indigenous community of Alaska and how they feel seen, it is just amazing to be able to be embraced in that part of our Indigenous culture and be able to showcase it in such a high caliber show as True Detective that is rooted in that culture,” she said. “To see the whole world embrace it as well, it’s been such an overwhelming, exciting time.”

For Abbott Elementary stars Chris Perfetti and Lisa Ann Walter, their series’ third nomination for best television series, musical or comedy, is just as thrilling as the first.

“It becomes increasingly more fun,” said Perfetti. “I feel like in our first year, we kind of made the season in a bubble. We had no idea that people were going to see it, let alone like it. And now, there’s still people coming up to us who are fans of the show, who like what we’re doing. I feel like we’re really in our element now, and we have a confidence about what we’re doing. And so I’m way more able to receive it than I was in the first year. It feels really, really good.”

Added Walter: “The first year, the success that we had at all the award shows was such an onslaught. It was such a surprise. I started to feel like we were annoying other shows,” she said. “Since then, I feel like the show has gotten better. It’s amazing that we’re still nominated and people still love the show, but it feels a little bit more relaxed now. I don’t go to the awards now thinking, ‘Oh my God, this better be the best I’ve ever looked, because it might never happen again.’ Now I go to the awards going, ‘What can I get away with not wearing a Skims under? How can I not wear an underwire bra?’”

In addition to the great time they expect to have at the Globes on Sunday, Perfetti and Walter teased the “match made in heaven” that is Abbott’s upcoming crossover episode with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

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“I can’t believe we’re giving it to them this early, but it’s very Quinta [Brunson] to make people think that this is the climax of something,” said Perfetti. “I feel like what happens at the end of this season is going to make people lose their shit even more. The crossover that’s happening in a few days is so great. It’s like a match made in heaven. It’s something that makes so much sense, and a lot of people—maybe not a lot of people, but I—have been waiting for. I think it will really deliver.”

“That’s one of the shows that I watched every episode of,” added Walter. “And so now we get to work with that entire group of people that are on their own, this cohesive, incredible ensemble cast. I almost wish it was more of a Sharks and Jets kind of fight thing.”

VF and Amazon MGM Studios’ elegant affair was held at LA’s famed Bar Marmont, where guests enjoyed the musical stylings of DJ Denise Love Hewett, a variety of passed appetizers, specialty cocktails, and an elaborate, very popular caviar bar by Carving Block.