The night before Donald Trump returned to the White House, one of the splashiest inauguration week bashes was kicking off at D.C. hot spot Sax Restaurant & Lounge. Atlanta rapper Waka Flocka Flame performed, while conservative VIPs Ben Shapiro, comedian Terrence K. Williams and “Am I Racist?” star Matt Walsh were honored while a crowd of 600 partied until the wee hours.
While the guest list was apropos for a Trump 2.0 celebration, some might be shocked by who sponsored and shelled out $75,000 for the event: none other than TikTok, which signed on to host in November. This marked a stark shift from 2017, when Trump was persona non grata among mainstream media companies.
“It was kind of happenstance that the party ended up being on the same day that they were scheduled to go dark,” says CJ Pearson, co-chair of the GOP Youth Advisory Council and a co-host of the party. “Obviously President Trump saved the platform. It could have been a funeral, but instead it was a very, very jubilant celebration.”
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Tech oligarchs like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook are firmly atop the guest list for another four years of Trump, having proven their fealty on the rotunda at Monday’s inauguration. Many in show business are wondering just how close Hollywood will cozy up to Trump in this new era.
Talent who pledged early support have been put through the social media wringer. “American Idol” star Carrie Underwood was Photoshopped into a KKK robe by one X user after she confirmed she would perform at the inauguration. Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson and Jon Voight were mocked and eye-rolled by showbiz insiders when Trump announced this month that they would serve as his envoys to the entertainment industry.
For some, a return to 2020 — before COVID, strikes and devastating wildfires crippled Hollywood’s limping economy — would be welcome, even if meant enduring Trump’s drive-by attacks on the industry. Members of the industry’s most left-wing contingent — the unions — are privately expressing hope that the president’s planned tariffs on imports may cover runaway production, thus creating a greater incentive to film in hard-hit hubs like Los Angeles and Atlanta.
One prolific indie film producer says he doesn’t care for Trump’s politics, but admits it is “refreshing to hear the office of the president focus on how we can get the movie business back on track — and back in Los Angeles.”
The producer made a film released last year chronicling historic events in L.A. “We had to shoot the whole thing in Bulgaria because it cost half as much. I had to sleep in a stinky hotel and not the house I worked my entire life to buy,” he says. “You didn’t hear Biden talking about how to help us.”
To numerous power players Variety spoke with, just as staggering as the town’s silence over the encroaching Trump effect is the procession of media moguls — from Amazon executive chairman Bezos to Disney CEO Bob Iger — making the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago or donating to Trump’s inaugural fund. After-parties for the Golden Globes were abuzz with news that Prime Video had plunked down $40 million to license a documentary about Melania Trump — to be directed by disgraced filmmaker Brett Ratner, who was accused by six women of sexual misconduct in 2017.
“Hollywood’s lost its nerve,” said one chief executive at a media conglomerate.
Bezos, who celebrated Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory over Trump by noting that “unity, empathy and decency are not characteristics of a bygone era,” is believed to have approved the deal.
Reversing allegiances is par for the course in the industry. In 2001, Beyoncé performed at George W. Bush’s inauguration with Destiny’s Child, only to serenade Barack Obama when the 44th president took office in 2009. “The Sopranos” star Drea de Matteo says she voted for Biden in 2020 only to go full MAGA in 2024 after becoming disillusioned by the Democrats’ push for COVID vaccine mandates.
“There is a bit of a shift,” de Matteo says of the town’s growing receptiveness toward Trump. “Hollywood is going to fall in line with whatever because at the end of the day, it’s still a huge fucking industry and they still have to make money.”
Just as a pragmatic Iger must now pay respect to Trump, so too must his former communications czar Zenia Mucha. The Disney alum, known as Iger’s secret weapon for dodging PR imbroglios, is chief brand and communications officer for TikTok and is running strategy behind the scenes. Industry observers could see her fingerprints when TikTok CEO Shou Chew thanked Trump for “his commitment to work with us to find a solution” after the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that bans the China-owned app in the U.S.
“The irony of Zenia — a former C-suite executive of one of the most progressive Fortune 500 companies in the world — now forced to lobby Donald Trump on behalf of a foreign adversary of the United States, China, is the epitome of the phrase ‘stranger than fiction,’” says Chris Fenton, a producer on “Iron Man 3” who worked closely with Rep. Mike Gallagher, former chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, on the TikTok issue. (Mucha declined comment.)
While the billionaire class is playing nice with Trump, it is unlikely that the number of actors who publicly support the incoming president will expand beyond the small cadre that includes Zachary Levi and Rob Schneider. Roseanne Barr was one of an even smaller group who were vocal about casting their votes for Trump back in 2016. And she believes it got her canceled in Hollywood — by none other than Iger, who fired her from her top-rated show “Roseanne” for what he later called a “completely insensitive, completely disrespectful” tweet about Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett.
“I’m extremely happy that Trump won because I need artistic freedom,” Barr tells Variety. “And I was always under the assumption that I had that being an American. So I’d like it back.”