Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal had a plan. They would meet out the front of the Met Gala because they knew barely anybody else attending, and it’s always better to have company when you’re faced with a party full of air-kissing people you’ve never met before. But on the first Monday in May, Mescal and his girlfriend, singer Phoebe Bridgers, were late – or maybe it was the friendly, cheerful Edgar-Jones who was early – and she was left hovering in Oscar de la Renta at the entrance of New York’s Metropolitan Museum all on her lonesome.
“I felt like I was welcoming people in, being like, ‘Hi there, can I get your barcode to scan?’” Edgar-Jones jokes. Who did she see while she was moonlighting as an usher? “Sarah Jessica Parker arrived, and she looked so beautiful in this huge headdress,” Edgar-Jones recalls, her eyes wide. “I was like, ‘.’ And then James McAvoy walked past.” Later in the evening, she connected with “the gang” – Phoebe Dynevor, Regé-Jean Page and Nicola Coughlan – and began to get her party groove back. “It’s also strange too, to be socialising post-Covid,” she muses. “I certainly felt like I was having to dust off the cobwebs of how to interact just generally. And so it’s like doing that, but then also meeting people who I’ve watched on the telly for years.”
