The woman who found herself inadvertently helping A$AP Rocky jump a barricade outside of The Carlyle Hotel in New York City ahead of the 2023 Met Gala has opened up about the shock she felt after realising who she’d assisted.
On Monday 1 May, as fans flooded the streets surrounding the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a chance to glimpse their favourite celebrity, a video shared to Twitter by journalist Philip Lewis showed the rapper appearing to push through a crowd of people to jump a gate outside of the entrance of the hotel.
“So does anyone know why A$AP Rocky had to do this? #MetGala,” Lewis captioned the video.
In the clip, it captured the moment that Rocky, who was dressed in a black hoodie and black sunglasses, used a woman next to him to help himself up and over the barricade. After using the woman’s shoulder to propel himself over the gate, prompting her to react with confused yells, Rocky then lowered his hood briefly to the crowd.
The brief reveal was met with immediate gasps from the assembled fans, with many shocked by the sudden appearance of the rapper.
Speaking to The Independent, Madelyn Llanes, 21, from Long Island, New York, opened up about the confusing moment, and revealed that she’d initially refused Rocky’s request after he’d tapped her on the shoulder in an effort to get through.
“I went to The Carlyle early in the day just so I’d be able to see everyone’s outfits up close as they’d head out. What happened with A$AP Rocky is that I had felt someone tapping my shoulder, so I turned around and saw that it was him but my brain didn’t fully comprehend that it was him. He said: ‘Sweetheart I need to get through’ and I just told him ‘no’ because the barricade was right in front of me, there wasn’t really anywhere to go,” she recalled.
However, Llanes said Rocky didn’t take the no for an answer, as she continued: “He just pushed his way up and then hopped over and grabbed me and the guy next to me as he did. After he hopped over, he was like ‘thank you’ and then just laughed and flipped me off and then he went inside and that’s when I fully realised it was him.”
As for the reaction from the crowd once they realised who’d jumped the fence, the 21 year old said everyone “freaked out”.
“Everyone sort of had the same reaction. Everyone just freaked out that he had walked right through all of us,” she said.
The video, which has since been viewed more than 39,000 times, has prompted amusement and confusion among viewers.
“Perhaps he’s running late,” one person suggested, as Rocky’s unexpected entrance came just hours before the Met Gala, where he is expected to appear alongside his girlfriend Rihanna. “Riri will always get more attention so now he does this,” another person claimed.
“He wanted to make an entrance,” someone else claimed, while another called the entrance “embarrassing”.
Others joked about the woman’s reaction to being used by Rocky to jump the barricade.
“That one girl was livid until she realised who it was,” one person noted, while another said: “The power of celebrity is using someone’s face as a springboard and them looking at you in awe over it lol.”
The video also prompted confusion due to Rihanna’s seeming lack of urgency ahead of the Met Gala, as another video circulating on social media appears to show Rihanna arriving late to her hotel to get ready for the gala.
The absence of the pair on the red carpet so far comes after Rihanna revealed during the Super Bowl that she is pregnant with her and Rocky’s second child.
The Independent has contacted the woman in the video and a representative for A$AP Rocky for comment.
You can follow along with the Met Gala as it happens here.
