WASHINGTON (AP) – Famous people and people just famous-for-Washington scored coveted invitations to Friday night’s White House state dinner honoring the leaders of Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Denmark and Norway.
Will Ferrell, who famously parodied past President George W. Bush, and Bellamy Young, first lady on the TV show “Scandal,” made the cut, as did recently retired late-night host David Letterman, “Girls” actress Allison Williams and actor-comedian Aziz Ansari.
Unlike most state dinner guest lists, Friday’s wasn’t filled with celebrities with obvious links to the guests of honor. Among the few guests of Nordic ties was Marcus Samuelsson, the Ethiopian and Swedish chef who was a guest chef for the President Barack Obama’s first state dinner seven years ago.
The Nordic party was a twist on a usual White House protocol – state dinners typically celebrate a single head of state. But Friday’s affair capped a multilateral U.S.-Nordic summit on security and economic issues, a gathering Obama used to laud the Nordic states as model global citizens.
“I really do believe that the world would be more secure and more prosperous if we just had more partners like our Nordic countries,” Obama said Friday morning, standing aside his guests: President Sauli Niinisto of Finland and Prime Ministers Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson of Iceland; Lars Loekke Rasmussen of Denmark; Stefan Lofven of Sweden; and Erna Solberg of Norway.