Time cover girl, Beyoncé, and Pope Francis, not too surprisingly, skipped the top gala for Time’s 100 most influential people in the world Tuesday night — but there was still plenty of star power from the entertainment, media, political and tech worlds to keep photographers busy on the red carpet.
Amy Adams, the Golden Globe winner for “American Hustle” and Oscar-winning “Gravity” director Alfonso Cuarón made the scene while rapper Pharrell Williams provided some of the musical entertainment for the bash.
Seth Meyers, a top-100 honoree who earlier this week was announced as the host for this year’s Daytime Emmy show, was also doubling as the host of the annual Time magazine evening event at Time Warner Center’s Jazz at Lincoln Center, overlooking Central Park.
Time does not do a 1-to-100 ranking in its annual global power list, so celebrity watchers often try to gauge the star power by the table at which a particular mogul or star is seated for dinner.
And, as in past years, the hottest tables were actually not on the show floor — where the likes of Martha Stewart broke bread with Susan Sarandon and Padma Lakshmi at Table 3 and Katie Couric hung with Ed Burns at Table 1 — but in the second row, tables 6 through 11.
Last year, then-Time Editor-in-Chief Rick Stengel poked some good-natured fun at Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, who was believed to be attending his last Time 100 because the spin-off of the publishing division was believed to be imminent.
Instead, the protracted spin-off has not happened yet, which set up an interesting sight: Bewkes was back once again as the nominal boss but Stengel wasn’t, having finally absconded for the State Department in February.
“It takes longer than you think,” Bewkes said about the spin-off, which is now hoped to happen by June 30. All 10 members of the new Time Inc. board were at the gala to see how things work.
The board, though filled with distinguished media executives, has been drawing some criticism from Time Inc. insiders because of the average age of its members.
When former Kraft executive Betsy Holden, 58, was told that she was the youngest, she said, “That’s a little frightening.”
Time Inc. Chairman and CEO Joe Ripp defended the group, saying, “The board on average is one year older than the average S&P board [member]. I was looking for wisdom and experience. We are not going to be a magazine company, we’re going to be a diverse media company.”
The oldest member is 72-year-old Howard Stringer, the former Sony boss, who landed at one of the hottest tables of the night — breaking bread with Ripp, honoree Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who is being talked up as a possible Republican presidential candidate, singer Carrie Underwood, an honoree who also sang for her supper, and her husband, Mike Fisher of the NHL’s Nashville Predators.
Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs was ensconced next to them at Table 9 with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who made the top 100 list this year, and Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo -Iweala, also on the list, who was telling Chris Matthews that her son, Uzodinma Iweala, sold movie rights to his 2005 best-seller “Beasts of No Nation.”
When he was not delivering one-liners, Meyers, the new host of NBC’s “Late Night,” was at Table 10 with Time Chief Content Officer Norm Pearlstine and honoree and Fox News host Megyn Kelly.
Tucked in the corner of the elite second row was another hot table, No. 11, where honorees Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson Lopez, the Academy Award-winning songwriters behind “Frozen” and “Let It Go,” all dined.
And not far from them, Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp. [which owns The Post], was dining with Gary Ginsberg, a former top spokesman for News Corp. now performing the same job at Time Warner. Ginsberg at one time was said to be heading to the No. 2 job at Time Warner-owned CNN, but those talks cooled off in recent months and he appears to be staying put.
Media Ink was there as a spectator and seated in outer space at Table 29 — but I had good company: astronaut Mark Kelly, the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
Kickstarter CEO Perry Chen, a past honoree, was relegated to outer space with us.
The list featured the most women ever — 41 — with 20 of them making the gala.
In all, there seemed to be slightly fewer current and past top 100 honorees — 63, compared to the record-setting 67 that turned out a year ago.
Oprah Winfrey, who did not make the list for the third year, has been eclipsed for all-time most influential champ by President Obama, who was on the list for the ninth year. Winfrey did not attend, but her close friend Gayle King did.