Anna Wintour and her Vogue team tightly control the schedule of Met Gala arrivals — but at this year’s event, Matt Damon and his wife, Luciana Barroso, accidentally showed up “fashionably early.”
Damon, 53, recalled the gaffe during his Wednesday, July 24, appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The Instigators actor said that he and Barroso, 47, had been scheduled to arrive on the steps of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art between “6:23 to 6:30” p.m. on May 6.
“Well, this year, Chris Hemsworth and Jennifer Lopez were the hosts,” Damon said. “So, we were going because we had friends hosting it. … We actually did, like, a staycation where Lucy and I stayed at a hotel right by the museum.”
The couple “got ready and we were a block away,” he continued. “So, we were like, ‘Well, we’ll just walk over.’ They were like, ‘No, you can’t walk.’ … You have to arrive by car. It’s, like, military precision and you get a slot” to report to the red carpet by a certain time.
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Damon and Barroso did as they were told and left the Carlyle Hotel at 5 p.m., as their driver planned to take a detour through Central Park and around the city before dropping them off nearly 90 minutes later.
“Less than two blocks away, and it’s, like, we have to leave at 5 to get there at 6:23,” Damon told Fallon. “But, you know, it’s Anna Wintour and nobody wants to disappoint Anna Wintour.”
Outside the hotel, “this cop sees us get in the car,” he explained. “And he kind of signals and he’s like, ‘Follow me.’ And he turns his lights on, and he gives us a police escort. This is incredible. We’re getting a police escort. It wasn’t part of the whole plan. So we left the hotel at 5 [p.m.], and we pulled up to the Met Ball at, like, 5:03.”
“[The gala] doesn’t start until 8 [p.m.],” Fallon said.
The twosome were “bewildered,” Damon said, recalling how “all these people with clipboards [reacting] like, ‘Oh, my god, what are you doing here?’” He reassured the gala staffers, “We’ll just hang out here for an hour and 20 minutes.”
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He and Barroso “walked through the exhibit. And then we went into that big room where you’re supposed to have cocktails and there were, like, 100 bartenders and waitstaff and Lucy and me.” He added: “We were fashionably early.”
Neither Damon nor Barroso wore anything too daring to follow the “Garden of Time” dress code, but they did keep it classy. This year’s Met Gala theme was “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” to go along with the Costume Institute exhibition. Both wore Christian Dior: Damon donned a classic black tuxedo while his wife chose a flowing, white Christian Dior SS22 Couture gown.
Damon and Barroso tied the knot in December 2005, and share daughters Isabella, 18, Gia, 15, and Stella, 13. (Barroso shares daughter Alexia, 25, with her ex-husband, Arbello Barroso.)
Last year, the duo celebrated the 20th anniversary of when they first met. They first crossed paths in 2003 while Barroso was working as a bartender in Miami. Damon stumbled upon the bar while he was filming in the area. He was recognized by fans in the establishment and Barroso hid him behind the bar when the crowd got aggressive.
“He says, ‘Oh I saw you and I really wanted to talk to you,’” Barroso said to Vogue in 2018 of her first encounter with Damon. “So I put him to work with me! I said, ‘You know, if you’re going to be back here, you can’t just be standing there!’ He had trained as a bartender for a film years before, so he started making drinks. And he made me a ton of money in tips that night because of course everyone wanted to go and see him. It turned into a really fun night and then 15 years later here we are!”
