Jennifer Lawrence’s non-celebrity BFF Laura Simpson may have caught her during her red-carpet fall at the Oscars last week, but to the surrounding photographers, she might as well have been invisible.
Judging from what Simpson wrote in a Myspace blog titled “I went to the Oscars and nobody cared,” the experience of being a “normal” at the Academy Awards is pretty surreal.
This year, I was lucky enough to be invited to the Oscars. While every girl I knew squealed and asked what I was wearing I was riddled with anxiety. The day before the Oscars I had a fitting with Dior where I got to try on some beautiful dresses. I was between two dresses: the Carrie Bradshaw all-you-can-eat dress and the Angelina Jolie sexy leg kimono. I really wasn’t sure if I would ever get back to the Oscars so I let my inner Carrie Bradshaw take over and went with the dress with eight pounds of tulle. The fact that I was going to the show was no longer an idea but becoming a reality and like a 13-year-old girl at her birthday party, I had a complete meltdown.
First of all, there’s a ton of stuff that the cameras never show us at home. The road leading up to the red carpet is “filled with barricades with different entry points so no crazy person can plow their car through, killing everyone on the red carpet. Guarding each entry point through the barricades are men in head to toe camouflage with gigantic automatic weapons.”
Also, there’s what Simpson describes as “Jesus freaks” lining the street, just out of sight of the TV cameras. “I am not talking a few—I am talking every inch of the sidewalk is full of God-fearing picket signs and psalms. Right before you get to the red carpet, you get to Westboro Baptists with huge yellow signs of pictures of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Walker saying ‘BURNING IN HELL.’”
The weirdest part is that as a non-famous person, Simpson was basically treated like a total nonentity by most people working at the Oscars. While her BFF was posing for red carpet photos, photographers yelled at Simpson, “YOU IN THE HUGE DRESS, GET OUT OF THE FUCKING SHOT.”
“It is no wonder actors are crazy,” she adds.
The carpet is filled with screaming fans and photographers who only care about you; everyone is salivating to talk to you and telling you how great you look. We finally make it to the end of the carpet and I decide to use the restroom before I sit. Jessica Biel holds the door open for me and compliments my dress—no human being should be allowed to have her face and body. I get inside and Margot Robbie from Wolf of Wall Street shows me her Kardashian-sized diamond ring in line for the toilet and says “I feel like a guy with a gun should be following me—I could be halfway to Mexico with this by now.” The lights begin to flicker and we are told we need to take our seats. I quickly pee and head to my seat.
The good news is that once you get to the afterparties, things start to chill out a bit. Despite the weird treatment at the actual ceremony, Laura Simpson seems to be living the dream. She gets to be Jennifer Lawrence’s best friend (just like we all dream of) and meet Brad Pitt, who apparently smells incredible.
It turns out that the actual celebrities are way nicer to “civilians” than the press are, when it comes to Oscar night. Except Harvey Weinstein, who introduced himself by saying, “You know who I am.”
Photo via disneyabc/Flickr
