Celebrities Knocking on Doors Is the New Fancy Fund-Raiser

Celebrities like Oprah have begun canvassing ahead of the midterms instead of the usual fund-raisers and benefit concerts.

Imagine there’s a knock at your door, and when you open it, there isn’t an Amazon Prime delivery or a neighborhood kid selling wrapping paper on the other side: Instead, ta-da! It’s Oprah Winfrey herself. This wild dream will come true for a few lucky Georgians on Thursday, as Oprah joins Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams in get-out-the-vote efforts, including door-to-door canvassing and a pair of town-hall discussions in Marietta and Decatur.

“Oprah Winfrey has inspired so many of us though the years with her unparalleled ability to form real connections and strengthen the bonds of family and community,” Abrams told NBC News in a statement, adding that she’s honored to have her on the trail in what is a neck-and-neck race (and one in which records show Abrams’s opponent, Brian Kemp, has purged hundreds of thousands of voter registrations, a majority of them of African Americans, from the state’s voter roll).

Oprah isn’t the only celebrity eschewing the usual fancy Hollywood fund-raiser/benefit-concert route that became familiar in 2016—a circuit that has been deemed elitist and out-of-touch as it were—and hitting the streets instead. Will Ferrell also knocked on doors in Georgia last week for Abrams and fellow Georgia democrats, including Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Sarah Riggs Amico, making for some fantastic photo ops with high potential to be Funny or Die videos. Across the country, the progressive group Swing Left has tapped celebs including Lin-Manuel Miranda, members of the original cast of Hamilton, Natalie Portman, Kyra Sedgwick, and designer Rachel Comey to knock on doors to get out the vote this Friday through Election Day on Tuesday.

Canvassing is a “much subtler way of deploying celebrities on the trail and getting a dose of publicity,” Variety noted. And it’s also a sign of the times—how dire the midterms really are and how fragile the state of democracy is—when a billionaire like Oprah isn’t just rolling out the red carpet for a $50,000-per-seat fund-raiser at her Montecito ranch. She’s pounding the pavement instead.

See the videos.