Bette Midler, 80, Stuns in Black at the Steps Premiere — and Her Fairy Godmother Is Nothing Like You Remember

Some stars walk a red carpet. Bette Midler owns it — and on Sunday night in New York, she reminded everyone exactly why she’s still the Divine Miss M at 80 years old.

The legendary actress and singer stepped out for the premiere screening of Netflix’s upcoming animated movie Steps, and honestly, she looked like she was having the time of her life. Dressed head to toe in black, all smiles, posing alongside her much younger costars like she’d just popped out for a casual evening rather than commanding a premiere carpet. That’s Bette, though. She’s been doing this for more than six decades, and the woman simply does not know how to blend into the background.

The premiere, held in New York City on Sunday, November 8, brought together the voice cast of the animated comedy ahead of its Netflix debut on November 20. And while the film itself is a fresh spin on a very old fairy tale, the real story of the night might just have been Midler herself — still glamorous, still funny, still very much in the game as her 81st birthday approaches next month.

A Black Gown That Stopped the Room

Let’s talk about the dress, because it deserves a moment of its own. Midler wore a floor-length black gown covered in intricate beading, with a dramatic structured collar that gave the whole look a regal, almost theatrical edge. Strappy black heels finished it off. Her signature silver hair was swept up into a voluminous updo with a sweeping fringe, and her makeup — softly defined eyes, rosy cheeks, a peach-toned lip — was the kind of understated glamour that only works when the person wearing it has total confidence in the room.

It was elegant without being fussy. Classic without being boring. The sort of outfit that says “I’ve been to a thousand of these, and I still know how to make an entrance.” At 80, Midler isn’t chasing trends or trying to look twenty-five. She’s doing something much harder: looking exactly like herself, only better.

Posing for photographers, she was all smiles — the wide, genuine grin that has been her trademark since the bathhouse days in the early seventies. Next to her stood comedian and actress Ali Wong, 44, who went in the opposite direction with a striking strapless purple satin gown. The contrast worked beautifully: Midler in her timeless black, Wong in her bold splash of colour, two generations of funny women sharing a carpet.

Steps: Not Your Grandmother’s Cinderella

So what is Steps, anyway? Netflix’s new animated comedy takes the Cinderella story we all grew up with and flips it on its head — or maybe sideways is more accurate. This time, the story belongs to the stepsisters.

Instead of watching Cinderella suffer nobly while her stepsisters scheme in the background, the film follows those misunderstood sisters as they try to take control of their own destinies. Their attempts to rewrite their fates turn the whole kingdom upside down, and the result, judging by everything we’ve heard so far, is funny, chaotic, and a lot more interesting than another straight retelling of the glass slipper.

It’s a smart idea, really. The stepsisters have always been the most fun characters in the Cinderella story — the ones with the personality, the ambition, the delusions of grandeur. Giving them the spotlight feels overdue, and Netflix has assembled a genuinely stacked voice cast to pull it off.

Ali Wong voices Lilith, one of the stepsisters, while Stephanie Hsu plays the other, Margot. Amanda Seyfried takes on Cinderella herself. And the supporting cast reads like a wish list: Nikki Glaser, Daniel Radcliffe, and Peter Dinklage are all in the mix. It’s the kind of ensemble that tells you the studio believes in this one.

A Fairy Godmother With a Few Loose Screws

And then there’s Midler’s role, which might be the most intriguing of the lot. She voices the Fairy Godmother — except this is not the serene, sparkly, bibbidi-bobbidi-boo version most of us picture. Not even close.

“This particular version of the Fairy Godmother has good intentions, but she’s a little bit of a bumbler,” Midler explained in an interview with Netflix. Which, if we’re being honest, sounds absolutely perfect for her. The Divine Miss M playing a well-meaning magical disaster? That’s casting so right it barely counts as a decision.

Think about it: Midler has spent her entire career playing women who are larger than life, slightly chaotic, and impossible to ignore. Winifred Sanderson in Hocus Pocus remains one of the great comic villain performances of the nineties — all cackling menace and wounded vanity. Her work in Beaches could make a room full of strangers cry. And on stage, she’s always been a force of nature, the kind of performer who treats a concert hall like her living room.

A bumbling Fairy Godmother who means well but keeps making a mess of things is right in her wheelhouse. It’s the kind of role that lets her be funny and warm at the same time, and it gives a new generation of kids their first proper introduction to a performer their parents and grandparents already adore.

Six Decades In — and Still Stealing Scenes

Here’s the thing that’s easy to forget when you see a red carpet photo: Bette Midler has been at this for more than sixty years. She started out singing in the bathhouses of New York in the early 1970s, built a career that spans music, film, television, and Broadway, and collected just about every honour the industry has to offer along the way — Grammys, Emmys, Golden Globes, a Tony Award, and a Kennedy Center Honor in 2021.

She’s the rare performer who never really had a fallow period. There was always another album, another film, another stage show, another reason for audiences to show up. From The Rose to Down and Out in Beverly Hills, from First Wives Club to Hocus Pocus 2, she’s kept working, kept evolving, and kept her audience laughing — and occasionally crying — the whole way through.

And she shows no sign of slowing down. The Steps premiere comes less than a year after she celebrated her milestone 80th birthday on December 1, 2025. Ahead of that occasion, while accepting an award at her annual Hulaween charity gala, she poked fun at getting older in classic Midler fashion. “I’m no longer a spring chicken,” she joked, before declaring that she was now an “endangered chicken.”

That’s the thing about Bette Midler: she’s always been in on the joke. Age, fame, the absurdity of show business — she’s never pretended any of it isn’t ridiculous, and that self-awareness is a huge part of why audiences have stuck with her for so long. She doesn’t take herself too seriously, which is exactly why everyone else takes her so seriously as a performer.

The Hulaween gala, by the way, is no small thing. Her annual Halloween charity event supports the New York Restoration Project, the organisation she founded back in 1995 to restore and revitalise green spaces across New York City. It’s the kind of long-term, unglamorous, genuinely useful work that rarely makes headlines — and it says as much about her as any award ever could.

A Birthday Just Around the Corner

With her 81st birthday arriving on December 1, the Steps premiere feels like a fitting warm-up. Midler has never been one for quiet milestones, and turning up to a premiere in a show-stopping gown, surrounded by a cast of much younger stars who clearly adore her, is about as on-brand as it gets.

There’s something genuinely heartening about watching a performer of her stature still getting excited about a new project. She could have retired years ago. She could have settled into a comfortable life of awards ceremonies and greatest-hits tours. Instead, she’s voicing a chaotic Fairy Godmother in an animated movie and walking red carpets like she owns them — because, frankly, she does.

Steps arrives on Netflix on November 20, and if the premiere is anything to go by, it has a real shot at becoming a family favourite. The premise is clever, the cast is stacked, and the Fairy Godmother alone might be worth the price of admission — which, given that it’s Netflix, is nothing at all.

As for Midler, she walked out of that New York premiere the way she walked in: smiling, unbothered, and entirely in command. Eighty years old, a new movie on the way, a birthday around the corner, and still the most interesting person on any red carpet she steps onto. Some things, thankfully, never change.

Source: HELLO! Magazine