Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Scarlett Johansson and More Air Mail in to Cannes

Rhonda Richford
·3 min read
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It was a triumphant return to Cannes for Graydon Carter, who recreated the magic of his legendary Vanity Fair parties at the Air Mail and Warner Bros. big bash at the Hotel du Cap. It was the guest list of the week with Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Sting and Trudie Styler, Scarlett Johansson, Colin Jost, Oliver Stone, Troye Sivan, Jason Statham and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, John C. Reilly, Hank Azaria, Rebel Wilson, Paul Dano, Boy George, Adam Lambert and Eva Longoria.

“I asked a lot of friends to come, and they did. And they brought with them movie stars, which is what you want on a night like this,” Carter told WWD. He credited cohost David Zaslav, chief executive officer of Warner Bros. Discovery, with bringing in some of the biggest guns of the festival. “He’s a magnet for all this.”

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Halfway through the evening, Carter stood on the second-floor balcony looking down on the open-air dance floor, like a monarch surveying his kingdom.

“I sort of swore off this when I left Vanity Fair, and I did this and I’m loving this. I have the bug still in me — a teeny bug, a small virus,” he joked. Carter said the evening was “wonderful” but he was calling it an early night to take his daughter home. The editor has decamped to the South of France for the summer and is living in a nearby village.

The night was cohosted by Zaslav, who enlisted the stars of the new HBO show “The Idol,” including Lily-Rose Depp and creator Sam Levinson.

For his part, Zaslav praised Carter’s eye for film. “We both share a deep love of the motion picture business,” he said.

Guests tooled around the grounds of the Hotel du Cap in a vintage Renault Estafette, lent by Piedàterre Venezia’s Stuart Parr. Ghosts of cinema past were cast inside the hotel’s cliffside pool, with scenes from classic films projected on the water.

The packed party ran of out Dom Pérignon just ahead of the stroke of midnight, but guests danced away under the moonlight.

“The Idol” star Hari Nef was letting loose after having a close call. “There have been moments of abject stress and terror — like my dress was lost and where are the diamonds? The zipper broke and we had to adjust the seams. But other than that it’s fun in a way I didn’t know that I could get down with,” she said. “It’s been more fun than I’d had in a work environment maybe ever.”

But the crisis was averted and the diamonds were found, Nef assured.

“I felt beautiful,” she said of the premiere. “I turned around on those stairs, and I felt like a movie star.”

She is about to be in “Barbie” — but demurs on her fame. “I’m a person who is in movies, maybe one day I’ll be a movie star. But for now I am on earth, and I’m happy.”

Launch Gallery: Inside Air Mail’s Cannes Party

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