The Few, the Proud, the A-Listers: When the Marines and Hollywood Had a Ball

The best interviews are often the ones that go off script. One of mine changed how celebrities and Marines spent their Novembers for years.In the summer of 2011, I was a young entertainment reporter, called in at the last minute to cover a press junket for “Friends with Benefits,” the romantic comedy starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake. Junkets run like a conveyor belt: a few minutes per outlet, often the same questions get asked about on-screen chemistry, and then the next reporter gets ushered into the chair.A couple of days earlier, I had stumbled across a 19-second YouTube clip. A Marine sergeant named Scott Moore, in camouflage at a base in Musa Qala, Afghanistan, looked into the camera and asked Ms. Kunis, fresh from starring in “Black Swan,” to be his date to the Marine Corps Ball that November in Greenville, North Carolina. Fellow Marines from 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines had bet him he wouldn’t post it. He did.Mila was only months out of an eight-year relationship with former child superstar Macaulay Culkin and always came across as an unaffected Hollywood star. So, with my minutes ticking down, I asked whether she’d seen the young sergeant’s video from Afghanistan, and whether she’d say yes to his bold invitation.The actress, then 27, had no idea what I was talking about. But Justin had, and he immediately lit up. Between the two of us, like excited schoolchildren, we went to work on her. Mila called out to her publicist, the beloved late Nanci Ryder, who was in the next room, to ask about the date. Meanwhile, Justin piped up that she needed to do it for her country. With the camera rolling and caught up in the moment, Mila agreed. I suppose at that point, she more or less had to follow through. Then Mr. Timberlake turned to the lens and spoke straight to the sergeant.“I’m going to work on this, man. This needs to go down,” he declared.From a Dare in Afghanistan to a Hollywood CrazeI had no idea that clip, which ended up airing around the world, would garner such attention. I was so green that you can hear me on the tape fumbling the pronunciation of “Corps.” I still cringe at it.Still, within days, the story was everywhere, and it snowballed. Cpl. Kelsey De Santis, a Marine combat instructor, posted her own YouTube invitation to Mr. Timberlake, and he accepted. Sgt. Ray Lewis asked Betty White, then 89. She politely declined because she was taping “Hot in Cleveland,” so Linda Hamilton of “Terminator” fame recorded a video offering herself as his date instead.Other Marines tried their luck with Miley Cyrus, Paul Walker and Scarlett Johansson. Lance Cpl. Jonathan Burkett asked reality star Kristin Cavallari on Twitter, and she said yes within half an hour.What surprised the skeptics was that the stars showed up. Ms. Hamilton went with Sgt. Lewis on Oct. 29 to Westlake, Texas, according to Marine Corpsphotos. Mr. Timberlake escorted Cpl. De Santis to the Basic School Instructor Battalion ball inRichmond, Virginia, on Nov. 12 and wrote afterward that it was one of the most moving evenings he’d ever had. Ms. Cavallari attended Camp Pendleton’s 1st Battalion, 1st Marines ball on Nov. 17.The next night, Ms. Kunis, in a black dress with her hair pulled into a bun, stood for the national anthem beside Sgt. Moore in Greenville. His video had drawn more than four million views. His unit had just come home from a seven-month deployment during which, by reports, it lost six Marines and a Navy corpsman.Mila Kunis and Sgt. Scott Moore at the Marine Corps Ball on November 18, 2011. AP Photo/Marine Corps., Cpl. Johnny MerkleyFor a room full of Marines who had just buried friends, a famous guest at the table wasn’t just a gimmick. It was a night to feel seen.Ms. Kunis, a woman of her word, didn’t treat it as a one-night photo opportunity either. When I caught up with her the following summer at an interview for something else, she told me she and the sergeant had kept in touch.“We are still in contact,” she said.How Long the Ball LastedBy the next fall, the Marines’ own news site was running a story declaring celebrity ball dates “so 2011.” The trend never fully died, though. For the 2012 Marine Corps Ball, Sgt. Martin Gardner emailed an invitation to Kim Kardashian’s representatives, and she flew in from Miami, where she was filming a reality show, to join him at the 10th Marines headquarters battery ball in Greenville. That same season, Lance Cpl. Stephanie Butler asked Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper on Facebook.The last big echo came in December 2015, when Ronda Rousey, weeks after losing her UFC title to Holly Holm, kept her promise to Lance Cpl. Jarrod Haschert, whose video invite had gone viral that August. By then, the craze had run for about four years and spread from YouTube to Twitter, email, and Facebook.Two Worlds, Still Far ApartHere’s the twist I never saw coming. A decade after that junket, and after moving on to become a war correspondent, I randomly swiped, between assignments in Washington, D.C., on a guy who didn’t show his face in any photos. We are now married with two young daughters. Yes, a Marine. The Marine Corps Ball, held each year around the Corps’ Nov. 10 birthday, is now a regular part of our family’s calendar. This year marks 251 years since the Corps’ founding, and I’ll be celebrating later this week at a ball in Times Square.Looking back, what moves me most is the gulf that moment briefly bridged.Fewer than 1 percent of Americans serve in uniform. By 2011, the war in Afghanistan had dragged on for a decade, and for most people back home it was something that played out on the evening news. Then a sergeant in Helmand, with a grainy webcam and a dare from his buddies, got a yes from one of the biggest actresses in the country. For a few months, Americans saw the troops as young people with a sense of humor, a lot of nerve and a celebrity crush, and that stuck with people in a way casualty reports rarely did.That gulf hasn’t closed. If anything, it has widened. Just 49 percent of Americans told the Reagan Institute’s national defense survey last year that they have a great deal of confidence in the military, a drop of 21 percentage points since 2018. The armed forces have been pulled into culture wars, and Hollywood has grown more guarded about anything that looks like a political statement.Could it happen again? I’m not sure. I hear from former colleagues today that junkets are tightly managed and often virtual, and publicists vet every answer. It’s hard to picture a star today agreeing on camera to a date with a stranger before a handler has had a chance to weigh in.The way stars connect with the public has also shifted.Back in 2011, most of what fans saw of their favorite actors came through press interviews and red carpet appearances, which is part of why an unscripted yes in a junket room felt so rare. These days, a celebrity can post straight to tens of millions of followers on Instagram or TikTok, and a team usually thinks through how each post will reflect on the brand before it goes up.A gesture that once read as sweet can now set off a pile-on within hours, with one camp praising it as patriotic and another dismissing it as a publicity stunt.Still, every fall, young Marines keep shooting their shot. That wish never really changes. It’s the one Sgt. Moore described from Afghanistan all those years ago. “We all talk about what we are going to do when we get back,” he said. “And this was my dream.”

The Few, the Proud, the A-Listers: When the Marines and Hollywood Had a Ball

The Few, the Proud, the A-Listers: When the Marines and Hollywood Had a Ball

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