Met Gala 2023: Cockroach makes red carpet debut among stars such as Anna Wintour, Dua Lipa and Rihanna

In the words of Wendy Williams, ‘she is an icon, she is a legend, she is the moment.’

Now, we are not talking solely about Dua Lipa in her $10 million outfit or Serena Williams who revealed her pregnancy at the Met Gala 2023, but a guest who crashed the red carpet before any A-Listers arrived to celebrate ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’.

A cockroach was captured on camera running up the iconic steps to the Upper East Side museum, with Variety first sharing footage of the bug to Twitter before photographer Kevin Mazur posed with an up-close image of the gate-crasher.

Even though the cockroach failed to dress up to suit this year’s theme, the video has now been seen 5.5 million times on social media with nearly one thousand replies including: “Best dressed”, “Most on theme for Karl Lagerfeld tribute” and “Instead of killing it, he took a photograph? Did he say ‘who are you wearing?’”

However, shortly after the cockroach made his red carpet debut, Variety updated their Twitter thread with a ‘heart-breaking’ revelation that the bug had been stepped on.

While the internet remembers the Met Gala’s surprise VIP guest as well as Jared Leto and Doja Cat’s feline attire, PeopleWorld takes a look at other animalistic red carpet gate-crashers.

Met Gala 2019

Met Gala invites and tickets are highly sought after with their $50,000 price tag and this year’s cockroach may have taken advice from another pest who stole the show in 2019 for Camp: Notes on Fashion.

Lady Gaga, Lizzo, Harry Styles and Katy Perry all caused some chatter on social media but the highest engagement came from a pigeon flying onto the red carpet, with some joking that the bird was Lady Gaga’s fifth costume change of the evening.

Cairo Film Festival 2020

Ahead of galas or premieres, celebrities prepare themselves to strut down the catwalk and red carpet, however for one star, this confidence came naturally.

A cat, who became known as ‘Festival Cat’, walked down the red carpet for Cairo’s Film Festival in December 2020, before being petted by many of the attendees; the stray calico cat actually lived in the grounds of the Cairo Opera House so was probably questioning who was crashing their evening walk.

Kingsman premiere 2015

At the Leicester Square premiere for Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman movie, guests not only watched Colin Firth take on the role of a spy but also played ‘Eye, Spy’ on the red carpet as a furry face gate-crashed the event.

Colin, who starred alongside the likes of Taron Egerton and Samuel L. Jackson, was giving an interview when the rodent scurried next to his foot.

Legend premiere 2015

On this occasion, the animal that ended up stealing the show was actually on the invitation list as Tom Hardy’s Labrador-cross Woody melted hearts and tickled funny bones at the Legend premiere.

After jumping up at his owner, Woody managed to wriggle free and chase a pigeon that had flown onto the carpet in London.