Chiwetel Ejiofor's Take on the 2019 Met Gala Is Downright Refreshing
The Met Gala has embraced so many themes and ideas and people that there aren't many words one would be shocked to hear associated with the annual event, which just so happens to be one of the biggest on the social calendar. But within just a few moments of my phone call with Chiwetel Ejiofor on Monday afternoon, he utters it: "unpretentious."
See, for those of us-read: me-who haven't walked the red carpet of the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute's annual bash, that sounds kind of crazy. These are the biggest stars in the world! On one of fashion's biggest nights! But here's the thing: "It's actually just a celebration. As soon as I got my head around that, I was much more excited by it," explains Ejiofor. Remember that this is a man who's been to countless awards events over his 20-year-plus acting career. Turns out, compared to those, even fashion's big soiree is actually, well...fun.
"It was really just quite something to behold, all of the spectacle around it that happens. All of the people, all of the fashion, all of the kind of sense of itself is really great," says the British actor, who attended his first Met Gala in 2014 when 12 Years a Slave sent him into the fame stratosphere stateside. "It was slightly overwhelming the first time I was around it," he admits. "But I kind of enjoyed that it felt unpretentious. I might have been expecting it to feel a little pretentious or a little removed from reality, but actually it felt very embracing and very high-spirited. Very life-loving, if you like."
That's why Ejiofor is particularly excited about this year's theme: camp. "I’m just really excited to see the event unfold again, with such a great concept behind it. And in that high-spirited way, that unpretentious and life-loving way. It seems to fit the idea of 'camp' very well."
To capture that theme, Ejiofor worked with Salvatore Ferragmo's men's creative director Paul Andrew on a suited look that channels the bright young things of the 1920s and looks to add a heightened element to an already-campy part of fashion history. "It’s not rarified," he says. "It is generous, it is inclusive. But it’s not about being special in a mean way, as in an exclusive way; it’s about being special in an exaggerated way that everybody can embrace. Or just really being yourself, in a high-spirited way. So that was the kind of thing we were talking about, and how we could use little things to exaggerate that feeling."
To that end, Andrew and Ejiofor added new elements to a relatively classic tux. Lace-work covers the entire jacket, only visible in the right light, but unmistakable once you catch a glimpse. And instead of a bow tie? Well, there's no other way to put it: a feather. If subbing a feather for neckwear isn't a nod to camp-albeit a subtle one-I'm not sure what is.
And though Ejiofor is particularly excited about Monday night's celebration, that's not the only thing on his mind. In fact, he's got a lot more than the Met Gala going on right now. His feature-length directorial debut, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, came out on Netflix in late January of this year, and he's still feeling the impact. "The reception to the film has been so incredible," he says. "I’m just sort of bowled over by the way people have taken to it and taken to that story."
The movie, based on a true story, tells the story of 13-year-old William Kamkwamba, who built a wind turbine in an effort to save his village Wimbe, in Malawi, from famine. Ejiofor adapted the screenplay from Kamkwamba's book of the same name. And there was pressure shooting in a foreign country and language, he says it was "deeply satisfying to get through that and show the film in Malawi-in Wimbe, actually, which is the village that we shot in-and sense that reaction of the people there. It’s been incredible."
Next up, he's voicing Scar in the new version of The Lion King this summer. Though Ejiofor is a little bit older than some of the folks who will be revisiting the story that helped shape their youth, he's excited not just to bring it to a new generation, but to bring something new to the role. "That’s the fun stuff, is trying to discover it in a fresh way for yourself," he says. "That’s the journey."
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