Actress and Democratic fund-raiser Patricia Duff got stuck in an elevator with President Obama’s Secret Service detail on the way to a private New York benefit for the commander in chief.
While John Legend, Tory Burch, Mariska Hargitay, Harvey Weinstein and Michael Kors made it up to the event at the swanky Upper East Side penthouse owned by White House interior designer Michael Smith and HBO vice president James Costos for a $10,000-a-head fund-raiser for Obama last Thursday, Duff wasn’t so lucky.
Duff, according to a source, was “stuck in the prewar co-op’s tiny elevator with a strapping Secret Service man for a half-hour. Finally, the elevator got fixed, and Duff, who had to jump out, made it just in time for Obama’s arrival. The organizers played it safe and brought the president up in the freight elevator.
“When he addressed the group, which also included Lyor Cohen and HBO’s Richard Plepler and co-hosts James LaForce, Stephen Henderson and Architectural Digest’s Margaret Russell, the first thing the president did was tease Smith — who decorated the private areas in the White House — about his New York pad,” the source said.
Russell told us: “The president said, ‘You know, Michael has been working with me, and we don’t always agree over taste, so this is a good opportunity to come to his home and critique him.’ He looked around and said, ‘Nice,’ then he looked behind him, and said, ‘I don’t know about this.’ There were many designers and architects there and everybody laughed, because Michael’s apartment is stunning.”
Of Duff’s elevator episode Russell added, “It is a beautiful prewar building, and it shouldn’t have happened that night. She was trapped, but thankfully they were eventually able to free her.” When asked if they were relieved Obama himself didn’t get stuck, she added, “Yes. I think the Secret Service were also happy about that.”