Matt Damon Explains How He Showed Up “Fashionably Early” to the Met Gala

Matt Damon detailed his hilarious Met Gala mishap during his Tonight Show appearance this week.

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He shared that this year, he decided to attend the star-studded bash because Chris Hemsworth, who is his friend, and Jennifer Lopez, who is married to his best friend Ben Affleck, were hosting. For the event, he and his wife, Luciana, decided to have a “staycation” and get a hotel by the museum.

“We got ready, and we were a block away, so we were like, ‘Well, we’ll just walk over,'” he recalled. “And they were like, ‘No, you can’t walk. You have to arrive by car.'”

He noted that the process of arriving to the Met Gala is structured “like a military precision and you get a slot and you have to show up in that slot.” Damon was given a very early time, between 6:23 to 6:30 p.m. He was told that to leave from his hotel, “the car actually has to go through the park all the way around, through and then back to the other side.”

Damon, wanting to be punctual and have his Met Gala debut go smoothly, decided to leave the hotel at 5 p.m., thinking they would arrive right at 6:20 p.m.

“So we get out, 5 o’clock, and we come out of the hotel. And this cop sees us get in the car and he kind of signals and he’s like, ‘Follow me.’ And he turns his lights on and he gives us a police escort,” explained the actor. “I’m like, ‘This is incredible. We’re getting a police escort.'”

Thanks to the police escort though and the early departure time, the Damons arrived at 5:03 p.m.

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“It doesn’t start til 8!,” remarked host Jimmy Fallon, laughing at his friend’s predicament.

“So we get out of the car, and we’re bewildered,” recalled Damon. “And I’m like, ‘This is not right at all.’ It’s tented where you come in, so there’s all these people with clipboards like, ‘Oh my God, what are you doing here?’ I was like, ‘We got an escort, didn’t mean to. We’ll just hang out here for an hour and 20 minutes.’ They’re like, ‘No, no, it’s fine. It’s fine. Go ahead.'”

The Damons were there so early, the red-carpet photographers weren’t even ready. “These guys are like eating and they’re like, ‘Oh no,’ grabbing their cameras,” he said.

He then explained that, typically, guests are greeted by the hosts but “Chris and Jen are still getting ready.” But Anna Wintour happened to be at the top of the stairs. “We walked up this massive staircase and there she is,” said Damon. “She welcomed us and she kind of made a joke because we were so early. And then she says, ‘Go into the exhibit.'”

After looking through the exhibit, the couple made their way into the event’s main room, where they found “100 bartenders and waitstaff.”

“We were fashionably early,” Damon quipped.

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