The Environmental Media Association's (EMA) annual awards event may be the biggest A-list event you've never heard of – and the 2024 gala was no different, with Jane Fonda, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sheryl Crow, and Laura Dern all in attendance.
Michelle was joined by husband David E. Kelley, with the pair - who have been married for 30 years - making a rare public appearance together; on the green carpet, David was spotted taking pictures of his wife as she took selfies with Laura and Sheryl.
Big Little Lies star Laura was honored with the Ongoing Commitment Award at the gala, and her rousing speech which called on Americans to come together over the climate crisis saw her receive a standing ovation. She was welcomed to the stage by close friend Sheryl Crow, who performed three acoustic tracks – 'Soak Up The Sun,' 'My Favorite Mistake,' and 'Everyday Is a Winding Road,' – who also revealed how Laura was inspiring Sheryl's sons without realizing it.
"What I love the most about him admiring [Laura] is that he didn't really know that she was one of the very first people to hold him when he came home from the hospital, [that Laura] threw him his baby shower when he was just fresh out of the packaging, and so here I am getting to honor Laura who is in so many ways, an inspiration to my life, but also to my kids lives," Sheryl revealed to the audience of more than 300 guests.
The night kicked off with Lance Bass – co-chair of the EMA – walking the red carpet, along with guests Nikki Reed and Ian Somerholder, whose film Common Ground won Best Documentary, John Owen Lowe (the son of Rob Lowe), and 9-1-1 Lone Star's Ronen Rubinstein.
"Tonight is about celebrating this film and the people around us who are actually doing [the work] and Common Ground is changing lives, and it will change the entire agricultural industry," former The Vampire Diaries star Ian told HELLO!
"The more we can make noise around things that matter, that actually move the needle, the more we help to define and carve that path that's being paved for all the generations below us."
Held at Sunset Studios in Hollywood, where operations are 100% carbon neutral, the event saw guests mingling at a cocktail reception before a dinner was served inside a tent on the lot, with famed Los Angeles' vegan restaurant Crossroads catering the dinner with a delicious mezze spread, caesar salad, and later mushroom gnocchi, potato truffles, and more.
Wines from Medalla Real kept the party going, as the awards were handed out; Netflix's Unstable won the Paul Junger Witt Comedy Award, while Ellie Goulding's Monumental, an Amazon Studios film that saw her performing at Kew Gardens, in England, won Best Variety Feature.
Michelle and David were sat in the middle of the room, with a clear view of the stage, although they appeared to have left just before the final awards were handed out. Jane, meanwhile, sat front and center alongside Laura and Sheryl, while Riverdale's Madeleine Petsch sat with Mean Girls star Auli'i Cravalho.
But it was Laura's thought-provoking and emotional speech that saw her receive a standing ovation as she questioned why so many Americans refused to acknowledge the climate crisis despite it impacting them.
"Ask any farmer in Missouri or Texas if they've noticed changes in the climate in the last few years and they will say yes – the winters are harsher, the summers are drier, the patterns less predictable and there's a real cost to their crops. They know this," Laura began, adding: "They are smart, caring people and yet still not enough of them vote with us."
"Ask someone from the reddest parts of Florida about climate and they'll tell you that last year, the ocean outside their front door topped 90 degrees… moms in Alabama fear hurricanes now in a different way, just like they worry about school shootings more than they used to," she continued.
"And yet somehow not enough of them vote with us either, nor do the parents in Kentucky who live near a power plant or a factory and their kids have asthma, or the people in South Carolina and Tennessee who witness entire animal species vanishing every year.
"These people, our fellow Americans, are actively resisting the work. We're asking them to do work that will save their farms and rivers and towns. Why, I propose? It's because they've been told we're crazy."
The 56-year-old concluded: "We need to find a new language, one that works not just in Los Angeles at a fundraiser, but in Iowa and Oklahoma and West Virginia. We must see and celebrate community with everyone despite all our anger, and our fear, however rightfully justified, because community is our only answer now… because a majority of Americans fundamentally want community not chaos, just as they want votes not violence, laws not lies, books not bans and truth not tantrums."