Member-only story
How the Pandemic Wounded the Cult of Celebrity
365 days ago, a group of actors learned that money and fame didn’t mean as much as they’d thought
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
A year ago, we were scared. The world had shut down, and nobody really knew how dangerous Covid-19 was going to prove to be. We were wiping down groceries, thinking that being anywhere near anyone else was a death sentence. Jobs were vaporizing; entire industries seemed to be shutting down. And we had a president we knew was constitutionally incapable of saving anyone’s life.
On this morning a year ago, Gal Gadot saw this dire state of the world and decided to do something. So she gathered as many millionaire celebrities as she could — Will Ferrell, Zoë Kravitz, Jimmy Fallon, Mark Ruffalo and more — to do something transformative.
They recorded themselves singing John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
The video went viral, though not for the reasons Gadot originally wanted; it was widely mocked as the empty gesture it was. Could there really have been any other outcome? The montage was grossly inadequate in a time when the world was looking for tangible, real help. While the idea might have gone over well in…
