"Welcome to the seminar on Egyptian hieroglyphics," said NBC Entertainment president Robert Greenblatt, opening his speech at the premiere of the network's new drama Smash, to titters from a packed audience that included such names as Fran Lebowitz, Mamie and Grace Gummer, Tony Danza, Sally Field, Lauren Hutton, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, Uma Thurman, and Dree Hemingway. The remark was a little less out-of-the-blue in context: the event, hosted by NBC, The Cinema Society, and Volvo, was held at the screening auditorium in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and its after-party at the museum's famous Temple of Dendur. After catching the pilot and some sneak previews of the show—which centers on two aspiring actresses, each hoping to be cast in a new Broadway musical adaptation of the life of Marilyn Monroe—theater types like Nathan Lane, Bernadette Peters, and Bebe Neuwirth joined the show's stars (among them Katharine McPhee, Megan Hilty, Anjelica Huston, and Debra Messing) in sipping champagne and nibbling on lobster tails late into the night.