'We're dressed up like a bunch of a**holes.' Every celebrity who has publicly trashed the Met Gala.

May 1, 2025

The Met Gala 2025 season is in full swing. We've got the drama, the interpret-how-you-will theme, and plenty of celebrities in the final hour of preparation and pomp.

But amid all the designer dresses and lavishness, there's a growing group of Hollywood's elite that aren't afraid to throw some shade at the Met Gala.

Watch: The wildest Met Gala looks of all time. Post continues below.

Video via Mamamia.

With this in mind, here are eight celebrities who have dished on the Met Gala—and why they're not massive fans of the event.

SZA: "I snuck out the back."

SZA said in an interview that she felt extremely overwhelmed and anxious at the 2022 Met Gala, which led her to leave the event early.

She told the Finish Line Women's Community Voices series that her anxiety became unmanageable as the night went on.

"I snuck out the back as soon as Lenny Kravitz hit the stage because I was feeling very like, 'Whoa, my anxiety's going crazy.'" SZA avoided the main exit, walked several blocks barefoot and caught a taxi back to her hotel to avoid the paparazzi.

The singer spoke candidly about the pressure to look perfect and the pain of comparison. "You want to do your job, you want to show up, and all these people are excited for you to be there, but it's like, 'Damn, I don't feel confident'… then there's all this weird comparison, and it's really unhealthy."

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May 1, 2025

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SZA did not attend the Met Gala in 2023, but she did attend the 2024 Met Gala.

SZA at the Met Gala in 2022. Image: Getty.

Gwyneth Paltrow: "It was so un-fun."

Back in 1995, Paltrow attended her first Met Gala, and continued to attend sporadically over the next decade.

Then in a series of interviews, Paltrow said her time at the Vogue/Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute event wasn't as grand as it's perhaps made out to be...

"I'm never going again," Paltrow told The Kyle and Jackie O Show, just days after the 2013 event.

"It was so un-fun. It was boiling. It was too crowded. I did not enjoy it at all."

In recent years, she appears to have pulled back on hating on the event. On her Goop website, Paltrow said she was delighted to be invited to the 2013 event, saying she liked the theme 'Punk: Chaos to Couture'.

Then in 2017, after abstaining for four years, she was back on the Met Gala's champagne carpet. She also attended in 2019.

Gwyneth Paltrow at the 2013 Met Gala, which she later said was "un-fun". Image: Getty.

Demi Lovato: "It was very cliquey."

After Demi Lovato attended the 2016 Met Gala, they told Billboard they met one celebrity who "was a complete bitch and was miserable to be around. It was very cliquey."

Lovato ended up making an abrupt exit, saying the unnamed celebrity caused them to leave and head straight to an AA meeting because of an overwhelming anxiety-induced desire to drink.

"I related more to the homeless people in [my AA meetings] who struggled with the same struggles that I deal with than the people at the Met Gala—fake and sucking the fashion industry's d**k," Lovato said.

At the time of the Met Gala, Lovato had Instagrammed a photo of Minaj giving her side-eye, with the caption: "This picture pretty much summed up my first and probably last met #cool #sof**kingawkward #notforme #sweatpants #forensicfiles #whatsgood."

Designer Jeremy Scott, also in the image, had dressed both Minaj and Lovato for the event, posing for a photo opportunity. Minaj later posted a photo of the three of them to Instagram too, but only tagged Scott.

Image: Instagram/Getty.

It comes after a 'Hollywood handler' (a person who handles... Hollywood people?) told Page Six the event is the "Mean Girls" of galas.

Amy Schumer: "Dressed up like a bunch of fking aholes."

Comedian and actor Amy Schumer once said the event "felt like a punishment".

After the 2019 Gala, she told Howard Stern on his SiriusXM radio show that the star-studded fashion event was far from fun.

"It's people doing an impression of having a conversation... I don't like the farce. We're dressed up like a bunch of f**king a**holes," she said. "I got to meet Beyoncé, and she was like, 'Is this your first Met Gala?' And I was like, 'It's my last.'"

She shared a similar sentiment with Vogue, saying she doesn't think it's "stupid" but "just not my thing".

"I just have this sense of entitlement that I should be able to feel comfortable at all times, like I could go to bed at any moment in what I'm wearing."

Despite her feelings towards the Met Gala, Schumer has continued to attend. Most recently, she was at the 2022 Met Gala and when asked what she was most looking forward to, she said: "I'm also here for the drinks."

Amy Schumer at the Met Gala in 2019 (left) and 2022. Image: Getty.

Quannah Chasinghorse: "I felt alone."

Quannah Chasinghorse attended the Met Gala for the first time in 2021.

The Indigenous model and climate-change activist, whose heritage is Han Gwich'in and Oglala Lakota, said she felt like an outsider at the event, despite being a top model in the fashion industry.

"It was just such a weird space to be in. I remember standing there and looking at everyone and feeling so alone. Like, really, really lonely," she told Insider.

"No one knew me. No one cared to ask. People are there for themselves and it shows. I felt alone because my people haven't been welcomed into these spaces before. It's really important to get representation into these spaces."

When the 2022 event rolled around, she said, "This year [I'm] more prepared."

Image: Getty.

Tina Fey: "A jerk parade."

It's safe to say you probably won't see Tina Fey at the Met Gala again.

After attending the event in 2010, she said she had no plans to return, after having such a negative experience. She even referred to the Met Gala as "such a jerk parade".

"Every jerk from every walk of life is there, wearing some stupid thing... It's just everybody, if you had a million arms, it's all the people you would punch in the whole world," she told David Letterman in 2015.

"I dragged my husband along with me, which I'm still in trouble for."

Image: Getty.

Lena Dunham: "A crazy countdown to escape."

In a now-deleted interview she did in her newsletter alongside Amy Schumer, Lena Dunham also said she didn't have the best of experiences at the Met Gala.

"You and I were literally sitting across from each other at the Met Ball, and it was like a crazy countdown to when we could escape," Dunham said to Schumer in the chat.

"You were like, 'We're honoured to be here. We're honoured to be here [sarcastically].'"

Dunham also described what it was like to sit with NFL player Odell Beckham Jr., alleging that he wasn't particularly nice to her.

"I was sitting next to Odell Beckham Jr., and it was so amazing because it was like he looked at me and he determined I was not the shape of a woman by his standards. He was like, 'That's a marshmallow. That's a child. That's a dog.' It wasn't mean—he just seemed confused.

"It was like we were forced to be together. I was like, 'This should be called the Metropolitan Museum of Getting Rejected by Athletes.'"

Image: Getty.

Zayn Malik: "Self-indulgent."

Former One Direction band member Zayn Malik is also on the list of celebs who aren't keen on the whole Met thing.

He attended the 2016 Met Gala with his then-girlfriend, model Gigi Hadid, but has since revealed he has no plans to go again after finding the whole event overly pretentious.

"Now it's not something I would go to," he told GQ in 2018. "I'd rather be sitting at my house doing something productive than dressing up in really expensive clothes and being photographed on a red carpet...

"To do the self-indulgent 'look at me, I'm amazing' thing on the red carpet, it's not me."

Image: Getty.

With the 2023 Met Gala around the corner, there's every chance we'll see a new string of celebrity attendees share their honest thoughts on the fashion industry's 'night of nights'.

What are your thoughts on the Met Gala? Let us know in the comments below.

Feature Image: Getty.

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