And of course, I was well prepared for this part of the carpet. After all, I was a writer at BuzzFeed for a couple of years before then, and had found myself on the other side of the carpet rope plenty of times, waiting for one celebrity or another to walk by so I could scream their name and pray they’d stop and give me some innocuous quote. I’d had plenty of hapless publicists come up to me and whisper, “I have so-and-so, from so-and-so,” and I’d shyly wag my head and shrug my shoulders and hope that they didn’t take it personally. It’s all part of the never-ending fuck-fest that is Hollywood. But the conveyer belt plugs along regardless of your feelings. After getting rejected by one too many people with microphones, you’re pushed through another tent and then a walkway and then someone is scanning your ticket and handing you a badge and you’re shoved inside the theater like cattle shoved into a slaughter truck. The conveyer belt has ended, and somehow, you’ve survived.

•  •  •

We finally got inside the venue, and honestly I don’t even remember what series of hallways and entrances we walked through to get backstage, but the event staff led us to a tiny greenroom where we could hang out before the show started. Now, at this point, I’d seen plenty of celebrities who had, at some time or another, made their way to BuzzFeed for photographs or interviews. I wouldn’t consider myself a person easily star-stricken, no matter how much I fawn over my favorite celebrities on Twitter. But on this night, I was seriously bugging out. Because this greenroom was literally the holding room for every single celebrity who was there that night. On one couch sat the entire cast of Grey’s Anatomy—and sure, that show has been on since the dawn of time, but still, I’d certainly never been in the same room with any of them. In one corner there was Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy and all of the hot people from those CW shows whose names I can never remember but whose abs I’ve seen on the Internet. In another corner stood Chris Hemsworth, in all his meaty glory, and had I not been so deliriously paralyzed by everything that was happening, I would’ve taken a handful of him. But too much was happening all at once. All I could think to do was ask a person with a staff badge where, perhaps, I could find some alcohol, and she looked at me with eyes that suggested she thought I’d somehow snuck inside, before telling me that there was no alcohol backstage. But in any case, the show was starting in only a few minutes, and we had to find our seats inside the theater.