Hollywood Hits the Windy City: Roundup of Stars Traveling to Chicago’s DNC for Concerts, Events
While the world waits to see if/when/how Taylor Swift or Beyoncé will weigh in on the historic campaign to elect Kamala Harris as president, details are surfacing on the celebrity contingent that has committed to traveling to Chicago next week for the Democratic National Convention.
The 2024 DNC is the official event where Democrats from all 50 states and the U.S. territories will come together from Aug. 19 to 22 to rally for Harris in her bid to be elected to the White House alongside vice presidential candidate Tim Walz. Nightly programming will be headquartered at Chicago’s United Center with other party activities set to take place at McCormick Place Convention Center, all of which are rolled out as a collaboration between the Democratic National Committee, the Chicago host committee, the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois. Per the DNC, 50,000 visitors are expected to descend upon Chicago, a figure that includes 5,000 delegates and alternates and 15,000 members of the media.
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Those visitors will have plenty of options for how and where to mix, mingle and commiserate about the state of U.S. politics at ancillary gatherings organized around official DNC activities. According to a third-party event directory posted online, there are well more than 100 events happening next week in Chicago with a roster of confirmed headliners that includes John Legend, Jon Stewart, Billy Porter, Joan Jett, Octavia Spencer, DJ D-Nice, Lil Jon and stars of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Tongues have been wagging for weeks about which bold-faced names will be making the trek to the Midwest, even more so in the wake of July’s Republican National Convention that drew Amber Rose, Hulk Hogan, Jason Aldean, reality TV star Savannah Chrisley, Kid Rock, Dana White, Lee Greenwood and others. All eyes will be on the United Center stage to see how strategists deploy Hollywood elite to the main stage, particularly in an election year in which voters have repeatedly said that inflation, the economy and cost of living are the most pressing issues.
Ahead of the start of the DNC, officials confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that James Taylor, Mickey Guyton and Jason Isbell will perform on Monday night to help kick off the festivities during a program that will also feature a keynote from President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden and former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Taylor’s showing tonight will mark a return to the DNC stage. In 2012, he performed “Carolina In My Mind,” “You’ve Got a Friend” and “How Sweet It Is” from the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina. He turned up at multiple campaign events for Barack Obama, and performed “America the Beautiful” during his second-term inauguration in 2013. More recently, Taylor had been showing his support for President Biden’s re-election efforts before he elected to step down from the current campaign.
Kerry Washington, Mindy Kaling, Tony Goldwyn and Ana Navarro will serve as hosts at the 2024 DNC with each of the stars delivering opening remarks and marking appearances throughout the evening on select nights. The schedule is as follows: Goldwyn (Monday), Navarro (Tuesday), Kaling (Wednesday) and Washington (Thursday, which is also the day that Vice President Kamala Harris will formally accept the Democratic nomination for president). Additional performers are expected throughout the week, and those names have yet to be announced.
Jon Stewart and his team from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show will post from inside the Athenaeum Center for Thought & Culture for the entire convention’s run from Aug. 19 to 22. The show’s “all-star news team” will host from Monday-Wednesday nights, with Stewart hosting the live show on Thursday night. According to a site offering tickets, the closing night’s broadcast will run late (wrapping up after the close of the DNC around 11:45 p.m. local time) and is expected to be the most starry night of the convention.
The Creative Coalition, led by Robin Bronk, has also confirmed details for a series of events being hosted by the nonprofit, nonpartisan social and public advocacy organization of the arts and entertainment community. Led by president Tim Daly and CEO Bronk, the organization confirmed that it had booked a delegation that includes Uma Thurman, Uzo Aduba, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Yvette Nicole Brown, Anthony Anderson, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Busy Philipps, Jon Cryer, David Cross, Yolonda Ross, Iain Armitage, Chris Witaske and Danai Gurira.
Per Thurman’s rep, she is no longer able to attend in person due to work commitments. Ralph is also working next week on the series that landed her an Emmy, Abbott Elementary, but her representative confirms that she will make the trip for Thursday to attend the convention’s closing night. Brown, who actively donates her time and activism to politics and many other industry causes, will be on the ground in Chicago “and booked solid for many events,” per her team. Also confirmed are Aduba, Ferguson, Philipps, Anderson, Gurira, Cryer and others. The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Connie Britton is likely to make the trip, and a source indicates that Don Cheadle may also be in the Windy City. Others expected at the convention include CAA’s Bryan Lourd, NBCUniversal Studio Group chairman and chief content officer Donna Langley, screenwriter Billy Ray, Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Murphy.
On Tuesday, Aug. 20, Creative Coalition will host a VIP welcome dinner at the Whitehall Hotel. The following morning will be an Empower Policy Luncheon hosted by the org and sponsored by Full Sail University at Palmer House Hotel. Described as a leadership luncheon, attendees are expected to be “C-suite and policy trailblazers from Fortune 500, entertainment, Silicon Valley and policy.” The following morning, the hotel will also hold The Case for Kindness, a reception hosted by the Creative Coalition and sponsored by Articulus Entertainment that is a “salute to groundbreakers, trailblazers” and leaders from various sectors and special interest groups.
Capping off the Creative Coalition’s big week will be a benefit gala concert at Chicago’s Ramova Theatre on Halsted Street on Wednesday, Aug. 21. Per The New York Times, which referred to the event as a “contender for biggest and best party of the week,” the concert will be co-hosted by Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer and presented in partnership with Reproductive Freedom for All, End Citizens United and Gabrielle Giffords’ gun safety organization. Up on the marquee will be Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Drive-By Truckers and SistaStrings. The NYT reports that Gurira, Armitage, Aduba, Giffords and her senator husband, Mark Kelly of Arizona, will be on the scene. Previous iterations of the gala concert have seen such acts as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sting, the Black Eyed Peas, Journey, Elvis Costello, the Goo Goo Dolls and Melissa Etheridge take the stage.
Music is expected to be a big draw in the Windy City. Legend, who performed at the Lincoln Memorial after President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ inauguration in January 2021, is headlining a show at Salt Shed for billionaire Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Tuesday, Aug. 20. The night before, the Equality PAC will present a party featuring LGBTQ talent in Chicago’s iconic Boys Town that will feature RuPaul’s Drag Race stars Chad Michaels, Silky Nutmeg Ganache and Jackie Cox. Also on Monday, DJ D-Nice will hit the turntables at a celebration organized by members of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, and rapper Lil Jon will headline a Southern Soul party for Georgia’s State Democratic Party at PRYSM nightclub.
Per his rep, Billy Porter will appear and perform at a luncheon for veteran politico Nancy Pelosi in a showing that will mark a reunion for the two who last teamed for the Emmy winner’s June show during San Francisco Pride. LGBTQ+ Victory Institute’s DNC event, Victory at the DNC, will take place on Tuesday at theWIT Chicago and feature Pete Buttigieg, Zachary Quinto, Dana Goldberg, Wilson Cruz and the org’s president and CEO Annise Parker.
This story will be updated as more DNC details surface.
Aug. 15, 3:37 p.m. This story has been updated with Bryan Lourd, Donna Langley, Billy Ray, Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Murphy expected to attend.
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