The Academy Awards ceremony is over, but the red carpet is still rolled out in Hollywood.
Just not outside the Dolby Theatre, site of Sunday’s awards show.
Paige Thalia reduced and reused in Tinseltown style when she found rolls of the famous red carpet in a dumpster and hauled a section of it home to furnish her new apartment in Hollywood. She moved in about a month ago and had been looking for rug.
“I’ve been looking to furnish it,” Thalia said. “Rugs are really expensive, genuinely. The one I was looking at here was like $500. Insane.”
Thalia had a hunch she’d find what she was looking for — she remembered seeing the red carpet in the trash after a previous Oscars ceremony. She searched the area around the Dolby Theatre Monday, hours after the event.
“I went looking, and they had already cleaned it all up,” Thalia said. “I didn’t know where the carpet was. Didn’t think I had a chance.
“And, then I walked a block away back behind the El Capitan (Theatre) and they had a big dumpster full of rolls of red carpet. You could see it from the street. I walked up to one of the security guards. There’s a bunch of people around, and I just said, ‘I have an insane question. Can I have some of that red carpet?’ And, she said, ‘Yeah, go for it.’
Thalia posted about her new carpet — maybe the one Michael B. Jordan and Jessie Buckley walked on Sunday night — on TikTok. Her posts included photos of the discarded rolls, her trek home with the carpet under her arm and the carpet in her new place. Some of the videos have millions of views.
“My mom called me, she’s like, ‘What’s going on?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know.’ She’s like, ‘News stations are just finding you on TikTok.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s how it works now.”