Hollywood stars including Bill Murray, Claire Foy, and Rooney Mara were left stranded outside the 2023 Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards when a fire marshal temporarily blocked access to the venue on Sunday night.
Variety co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh posted video clips on Twitter showing hundreds of formally-attired actors and other attendees milling around at the Fairmont Century Plaza luxury hotel in central Los Angeles.
”Total chaos at the SAGA wards as Claire Foy and Rooney Mara are not being allowed inside the ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel — they’re told they need to wait for the Fire Marshal to let them and hundreds of other guests inside,” said Mr Setoodeh.
The reporter later added: “Even Bill Murray has to wait. This is madness!”
It’s not yet clear what caused the blockage, but it appeared to be resolved by 5pm local time on Sunday.
The SAG Awards are among the more prestigious of Hollywood’s many awards ceremonies, held by the powerful film and TV labour union now known as SAG-AFTRA.
They are considered by many in the industry to be a reliable bellwether of the Oscars in March, because actors make up the largest voting bloc in the Motion Picture Academy.
In one video clip of Sunday’s confusion, The Queen and First Man star Claire Foy can be seen with an expression of incredulity or annoyance as she stands among a crowd of people in the hotel.
In another video, comedy legend Bill Murray is also visible glancing around while a man with an earpiece, possibly a security guard, stands nearby.
Anti-vaccine activists had announced that they would stage a protest outside the awards show against the Union’s stringent vaccine rules. It is not clear if this was related to the fire marshal’s decision.
This year’s SAG Award nominations were led by reality-bending sci-fi fable Everything Everywhere All at Once and Irish tragicomedy The Banshees of Inisherin, with five nominations each.
