Awards season always brings together the most eclectic group of people to celebrate the things that bring us all together. 2023 US Open champion Coco Gauff departed the tennis court and left the racket at home, and replaced it with the red carpet, as she was spotted all glammed up for the 97th Academy Awards ceremony earlier this month. While Gauff had a lot to share in regard to the process to be red carpet-ready, I am loving the story she shared about when she met Samuel L Jackson.
At a media event (via ESPN), Coco Gauff shared with reporters the grueling process she underwent to be ready to walk the red carpet. Gauff isn’t against a little hard work considering the fact that she’s a professional athlete and a US open champion. But according to her, swinging the racket is nothing compared to getting ready for a red-carpet event. Hair and makeup started at 9:30am despite the fact that the event itself wasn’t until 4. Gauff did admit it was a long day, but she followed that by simply saying:
It was cool to just be in a different space and a different world.
All that hard work in the chair seemed to pay off, as she made it onto Vogue’s list of the best dressed stars at the Oscars. Outside of that, at the actual event Gauff was surprised by the amount of people who recognized her throughout the evening. But there was one person who stood out to her the most:
The person I was most surprised about was definitely Samuel L. Jackson, he came up to me, I took a photo with him, he took one with me, and then introduced me to Whoopi Goldberg, which was really cool.
It’s always cool to get to meet someone you admire or have seen in some of your favorite movies, especially when they come up to you rather than you going to them. Oscar night was quite big for a lot of people, not just for the 2025 winners. Gauff wasn’t the only person who got to have a cool meetup with a big star, Deadpool 3’s Dancepool was able to meet Robert Downey Jr. behind the scenes. Meanwhile Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield had a Social Network reunion that fans were loving.
With so many high-profile stars in one place, it’s always fun to see the meetups and crossovers between stars and genres. Though not everything from that night has been good and heartfelt meet-ups, as there were a few bouts of drama that happened at the Oscars.
While the meetup was cool for Gauff, there are rumors that there was some behind-the-scenes drama between Whoopi Goldberg and Halle Berry. There was also some drama regarding horror icon Tony Todd, who was not shown in the Oscars ‘In Memoriam’ segment which made fans and Todd’s family quite upset. This was rectified by adding him to the section on the official website, but those who are fans of his work were still upset that he wasn’t honored on the screen. Oh, and Goldie Hawn’s son accused her of blowing him off to talk to Andrew Garfield, although this seems to be more lighthearted compared to those other examples.
Awards season always has its ups and downs with so many big personalities and big stars being in the public limelight for all to see. But overall, it was quite the enjoyable night to watch and see all the fun meetups and glitz and glam that makes the award shows so entertaining for those of us at home. We now look forward to the rest of this year so we can make our predictions for the 98th Academy Awards in 2026.