ATAS/NATASThis Sunday, television's biggest stars will gather at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles to celebrate the best and the brightest in the industry.
All the A-listers will be there—Claire Danes! Tina Fey! Tom Hiddleston! They'll don thousands of dollars' worth of loaned (a.k.a. free!) gowns, tuxedos, shoes, diamonds and purses, and will spend the evening sipping on the finest champagne at the industry's most exclusive parties. But that's not all of the perks the celebs will be enjoying.
The swag bag is one of award season's most time-honored tradition. Since the dawn of man, or at least since the dawn of TV, actors and actresses have been getting their paws on loads of free crap to either supplement their trophy winnings or pad their pockets after a disappointing loss. Some folks out there may be wondering just where the fairness lies in the richest people in our country getting to enjoy a sack full of free stuff, but such is the nature of the business. If we wanted cool gifts, we should all just get into the television business.
One collection of swag is put together by GBK Productions, who is not associated with the Television Academy, which hosted a gifting lounge for A-listers to sort through. E! News happened to get our own grubby paws on the goods, and we dug through the entire haul—and it must be said that it is...interesting. Some of the goods are insanely expensive, some are unique, and some are just plain bizarre. But before we get into the oddities, we should start by announcing that the price tag for the entire gift bag is: over $55,000.
Yes, that is right, for the price of a new home's down payment, a BMW (probably, we've never bought one so we're not really sure how much they cost), or a ride on a private jet, you could just get the Emmys gift bag instead! And now for a few of our favorite (and least favorite) things.
A $100 Pilot pen. Yep, that's Pilot as in the pen brand that you find at the checkout counter of your local CVS. They've apparently gotten themselves into the luxury pen game, and we imagine that no A-list celebrity would be caught dead using anything less than the finest luxury to write with. This particular writing utensil is called the Ageless pen, and since it comes in its own protective case we assume that if you never take it out of the box, it lasts forever. Although, we did give it a whirl and have to say that it writes as smooth as glass.
A $1,000 plastic surgery gift certificate. We could spend the next few minutes ruminating on which celebrities will use which procedures, but you can just use your imagination. It's good for use at a place called Viva Youth, something tells us that this puppy's gonna go towards a few dozen units of botox. Either that, or the people over at the Emmys gifting suite are trying to send a message to us about our skincare regimen.
An $8,000 vacation to the Belmond La Samanna in St. Martin. There's gotta be some fine print to this, right? Anyone?
Free dental work. The stars could get $600 worth of free teeth cleanings and root canals at the Bedford Dental Group, but something tells us they prefer to not use coupons for their teeth.
$1,000 worth of Italian food from Il Palato. Or so the swag bag breakdown says, but all we see is a giant fruitcake. Sorry, make that a giant panettone. Although we don't want to rule anything out, because this could be a fruitcake made of gold and diamonds—we haven't taste tested it yet.
A crap ton of T-shirts. Because if there's one item that television's biggest stars are on the market for, it's promotional tees.
A bathrobe from a brand called Wrapped in a Cloud. We tried it on, and TBH, it's insanely soft.
Use of a service that makes wrapping paper out of your face. Okay, now this could be hilarious. Friends and family, be prepared to receive all holiday presents wrapped in a Ryan Gosling print.
A flamingo pool float. Floaties are fun, but aren't bird themes so last year?
So there you have it: Now you know what it's like to live like a star. If it sounds like it's actually more work to organize all your free crap than it is to just pay for things yourself, well, you wouldn't be entirely wrong. But that's the sacrifice of being a celebrity...it ain't always easy.