PHILADELPHIA — While a comedienne, a singer, and a Desperate Housewife-turned-Democratic power player voiced their enthusiastic support for Hillary Clinton inside the Democratic National Convention’s first night, some of Hollywood’s biggest Bernie Sanders supporters were denouncing her outside the secured perimeter.
On Monday evening, Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center hosted brief performances from Boyz II Men and Demi Lovato, who prefaced her rendition of her hit “Confident” with a speech about the importance of treating mental illness. She reiterated her staunch support for Clinton, urging the crowd to “make her the next president of the United States.”
Several prime-time slots later, comedian Sarah Silverman, a now converted “Artist for Bernie,” took the stage with with Sen. Al Franken (himself a former comedian and Saturday Night Live performer) to explain her defection to Team Hillary.
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“For this past year I’ve been feeling the Bern,” she told the audience. “Hillary heard the passion of the people, the people behind Bernie, and brought those passions into the party’s platform… That is the process of democracy at its very best. Hillary is our Democratic nominee and I will proudly vote for her.
“I will vote for Hillary with gusto,” Silverman assured fellow Democrats, shortly after declaring Clinton a “pretty kick-ass woman.”
Next, following a performance of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Paul Simon, actress and liberal Latina activist Eva Longoria, who has in recent years emerged as a serious force in Democratic politics, stepped up to throw shade at the Republican presidential nominee.
“This election is very personal to me,” Longoria said. “My family didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us. So when Donald Trump calls us criminals and rapists, he’s insulting American families. My father is not a criminal or a rapist. In fact, he’s a United States veteran.
“I believe in the candidate who believes in all of us, and that candidate is Hillary Clinton,” she continued. “Guess what, Donald? It turns out America is pretty great already.”
Longoria was immediately followed by Cory Booker, a Democratic senator she worked to help elect.
But not every Hollywood figure who came to town for the convention is here to stroke Clinton’s ego. Throughout the day, some of Sanders’s most diehard celebrity supporters joined the various protests and marches outside of the convention site to, among other things, denounce Clinton and prop up Sanders, who has already endorsed Clinton for the presidency.
Actors Danny Glover, Shailene Woodley, Rosario Dawson, and Susan Sarandon all arrived in Philly this week to show their support for their socialist-leaning Vermont senator—and to show off their #NeverHillary stripes.
At the very least, the Hollywood turnout at the Democratic convention stood in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s conspicuously D-list convention in Cleveland last week.
