Meryl Streep, Chris Rock, Ben Stiller Join Oprah Winfrey in Live Event With Kamala Harris

Several A-listers were among the thousands who joined a livestreamed event Thursday, hosted by Oprah Winfrey, that united the many grassroots political groups supporting Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.

At the beginning of the Unite For America call, Winfrey shouted out Meryl Streep, Chris Rock, Ben Stiller, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, Tracee Ellis Ross and Bryan Cranston for Zooming in. She also highlighted the grassroots groups that have hosted their own Zoom events supporting Harris in recent months, including Win With Black Women, White Dudes for Harris, Win With Black Men, Republicans for Harris, Swifties for Kamala, among others.

After Harris replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket for the 2024 presidential race, grassroots groups have united Hollywood backers and people across the county who have tuned in for lengthy, celebrity-studded Zoom calls, raising millions for the vice president’s campaign.

“I have never felt this much joy and optimism in a campaign in a long time,” Breaking Bad star Cranston said Thursday over Zoom. “I’m just so appreciative of Kamala to be able to bring back that sense of optimism and to squash the cynicism and the vitriol and the rancor that just seems to be floating all around Washington. And I hope that we’re going to ride this wave into Washington. I’m here, I’m here to support. I can’t be happier for this candidate. I think she’s going to be a terrific president.”

Comedian Rock added, “I wanna bring my daughters to the White House to meet this Black woman president…. I think she would make a great president and I’m ready to turn the page, man. All of the hate and the negativity. It’s gotta stop.”

The Zoolander actor praised Harris’ speech at the Democratic National Convention last month and said the feeling of the energy “kind of going from a stop Trump mode into a go Kamala mode” has been “just incredible.”

Later in the event, Roberts applauded Winfrey for hosting an event “to talk, to listen, to be heard, to have this back and forth is so unique in this campaign.” The actress also noted that this will be the first time her children are able to vote in an election, and she “couldn’t be more excited for them to have the legacy to say that their first vote they ever cast for president was for you. I have just chills saying that out loud.”

Ross also said the livestreamed event is “exciting because I believe in democracy, I believe in the future of our country and reproductive freedom, bodily autonomy, women leading, I believe in decency. The idea of leading with joy and kindness has always been in my DNA and I’m here both for the seriousness of this election but the joy with which it is being handled. It is stunning.”

After shouting out “all the amazing mothers,” Ross added that as a “52-year-old childless woman,” she’s learned that “you do not need to push out a baby to help push humanity forward.”

Elsewhere on the Unite for America call, Streep said she feels “the word of the day has been preventable,” adding that “all of this, the surround of hatred and venom and toxicity and encouraging some segment of Americans to hate other segments of Americans,” is preventable.

“It’s just crazy and nobody wants it,” the actress continued. “We’re done, we’re done with it.”

Winfrey then brought out Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer before Harris joined her onstage to answer voters’ questions about border security, her economic plan, the rising cost of living, women’s reproductive rights and gun violence, among other topics.

“I look around at these screens, Oprah, I look at who’s in the room and this is America,” Harris said. “I think in this moment, where we’ve dealt with so much that I think is quite exhausting around powerful forces that would try and divide us and try to have us as Americans pointing fingers at each other, that this movement that is about reminding each other that we have so much more in common than what separates us is so critically important.”

The Vice President said her campaign is “about the strength of who we are as Americans and this movement that we’re in about, as I like to say, ‘Seeing in the face of a stranger, a neighbor.'”

During Harris’ sitdown with Winfrey, which can be watched in full below, the moment that elicited the most emotion from the room was when Winfrey introduced the family of a woman, Amber Thurman, who died in what was determined a preventable death while waiting for health care in Georgia, a state that has banned most abortions.

“Amber’s story highlights the fact that, among everything that is wrong with these bans and what has happened in terms of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it’s a health-care crisis…that affects the patient and the profession,” said Harris, who took aim at Republican presidential nominee Trump for the abortion bans across the country that criminalize health care providers for providing such care, even when the mother’s life is in danger. “Is she on death’s door before you actually decide to give her help? Is that what we’re saying? Like literally, a doctor or a nurse has to say, ‘She might die any minute, better give her care now, because otherwise I might go to prison — for life in some cases.'”

The Harris-Walz campaign launched their Fighting for Reproductive Freedom Bus Tour on Sept. 3, which, according to the Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign, travels the country to “emphasize the stark contrast between Vice President Harris and Governor Walz, who will restore the protections of Roe v. Wade when Congress passes a bill to do so, and Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, who will enact their dangerous Project 2025 agenda to ban abortion nationwide, restrict access to birth control, force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions, and jeopardize access to IVF.”

This weekend, the cast of Scandal, including Kerry Washington and Tony Goldwyn, who each hosted a night of the Democratic National Convention, will reunite during the first stop of the Michigan bus tour Sunday.

This article was originally published on The Hollywood Reporter.