“This line is crazy,” said the broadcast journalist Don Lemon, as he walked toward the red carpet crush shortly after 7 p.m. on Thursday night.
He was bound for the Time 100 Gala, the annual black tie schmoozefest in Manhattan where a 100-person smorgasbord of luminaries — tech titans, activists, Oscar winners, pop stars, athletes and artists — was celebrated by the magazine as the most important people of the year.
If you honor them, they will come. And the celebrities who were feted at the event included Colman Domingo, Taraji P. Henson, Dev Patel, Patrick Mahomes and Dua Lipa.
Mr. Lemon, who arrived with his husband, the real estate broker Tim Malone, was not among the honorees. Still, he took questions from the journalists at the barricades who wanted to know about his recent wedding and which brand of tuxedo he was wearing for the night’s occasion.
“Suit Supply,” Mr. Lemon said. Then corrected himself: “No, Ralph Lauren.”
Maya Rudolph ambled toward a packed elevator. She was being honored by the magazine for her role in “Loot,” the Apple TV+ comedy in which she plays the ex-wife of a tech billionaire who uses the windfall from her divorce to become a philanthropist (think: MacKenzie Scott).
As the elevator car headed toward cocktails and dinner, Ms. Rudolph was focused on a slight problem with her black blouse. “The thing about linen is that it attracts lint,” she said, as seemingly everyone around her watched her pick it off, speck by speck.
Moments later, the guests arrived on the 16th floor at One Columbus Circle — the building formerly known as the Time Warner Center, now called the Deutsche Bank Center — where floor-to-ceiling windows provided a view of Central Park.
At the front of the room was Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who in March won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her role in “The Holdovers.”
Nearby, the comedian Alex Edelman said he had learned he was on the Time 100 list just a couple weeks ago, right before his one-man show, “Just For Us,” debuted on Max. “I want to meet Jenny Holzer really badly,” he said, speaking of the painter who was among the honorees. “I don’t even know what she looks like. I just love her work.”
At 8 p.m., the guests were ushered into an atrium with three levels. Mr. Edelman huddled with fellow Time 100-ers including Mr. Domingo, the actor, and Kelley Robinson, the first Black woman to lead the LGBT advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign.
At a table on an upper level was Lauren Blauvelt, who was honored for her work with the reproductive rights organization Planned Parenthood. At another table was Thelma Golden, who was honored for her promotion of the arts as the director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem.
For the second year in a row, the gala was being filmed for an ABC television special. Which meant that, in addition to a salad with very little dressing and a grilled salmon with barley, there were lots of starts and stops during the course of the evening.
Ms. Henson, an Oscar-nominated actress who starred in the recent big-screen version of “The Color Purple,” was among the first to take to the stage. “Welcome to the 2024 Time 100 gala,” she said. “I’m Taraji P. Henson and we — we!— are the most influential people of the year. Can you believe that?”
She offered shout-outs to “the visionaries and thought leaders” who “together could save the world” or at least “crush a game of Jeopardy.” She then waved from the stage to her “sister from another mister,” the television host Kelly Ripa, another member of Time’s class of ’24.
In a Time 100 gala tradition, honorees raised their glasses to those who have inspired them. Ms. Rudolph, the first up, gave a toast to Beyoncé. Michael J. Fox, the winner of a special impact award for his work on behalf of Parkinson’s disease, paid tribute to his father, William Nelson Fox, who died in 1990.
The actor said his father did not have a high school degree but had demonstrated how one could persevere with a “master’s degree” in adversity. “It would be his 95th birthday this weekend,” Mr. Fox said. “He was 61 when he died. I’m now 62.”
As servers cleared the tables, the rapper 21 Savage introduced the 2024 inductee, Mr. Mahomes, the quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs. He raised his glass to the entire field of women in competitive sports, throwing in a plug for the Kansas City Current, the professional women’s soccer team in which he and his wife, Brittany Mahomes, have an ownership stake.
A little after 10 p.m., Ms. Robinson, the chief executive of the Human Rights Campaign, gave the evening’s final speech. She declared that she and her fellow honorees were “proof that the story of America is the story of progress, equality, and change.”
After which the singer Dua Lipa took to the stage to perform “Houdini” and two other songs.
“Thank you, Time 100,” she said, clutching the microphone. “It is such an honor to spend the evening with you.”
