“Kat McPhee is up there. I need to ask her what happens on Smash,” the girl next to us at Rebecca Taylor announced breathlessly. It was true that Kat McPhee was in the house — looking chic if perhaps unseasonal in all black and a complicated chignon — but no one was going to get to ask her anything. La McPhee was doing basically no press. In fact, her handler shooed away Women’s Wear Daily before she realized what she’d done and bellowed the words, “WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY,” over and over, until the reporter came back, notebook in hand. “Let’s forget this ever happened,” the PR person suggested. WWD didn’t look that amused, but at least she got her quotes. Everyone else who approached McPhee was run off — although, to be fair, she did pose for some photos. It seemed slightly un-egalitarian for someone who wouldn’t even be there if not for the support of the public, and sort of weird for someone who is presumably making the rounds to drum up press for the aforementioned Smash. Maybe any spoilers she knows of are just too terrible to even risk spilling.
On the other side of McPhee sat Louise Roe, whom we always want to dislike but who is correspondingly always so friendly and charming whenever we spy her in person that we just can’t manage to do it. To Roe’s left sat Blue Blood’s Sami Gayle, who was wearing what looked like black leather boxing shorts and her trademark kicky pixie crop. Gayle was the anti-McPhee, chatting up all comers and being introduced around the room by stylist Robert Verdi (maybe he was behind the shorts). We’re pretty sure that at one point she even spoke to someone’s middle school paper. Essentially, she charmed the room. Hey, maybe she knows some Smash spoilers. Can’t hurt to ask.
