A Birthday at The Abbey: Friendship, Hollywood, Advocacy, and the Beautiful Way Life Connects the Dots
Celebrating Trish Moran with Terri Ford in West Hollywood, surrounded by friendship, creativity, activism, history, and the unexpected connections that make a life
By Prince DeAndre, Duke of Hanumanteshwar
There are birthday parties, and then there are evenings that quietly become something more.
Celebrating our dear friend Trish Moran on her actual birthday at The Abbey in West Hollywood, together with her wife, Terri Ford, was one of those evenings.
On the surface, it was exactly what a birthday celebration should be. There was laughter, music, conversation, photographs, familiar faces, new introductions, a birthday cake, and that unmistakable energy of a Hollywood night.
But as I looked around, I began to recognize something else.
This was not simply a gathering of people.
It was a gathering of stories.
Stories from Hollywood. Stories from television. Stories from the global LGBTQ+ movement. Stories from the fight against HIV/AIDS. Stories of friendship that have traveled between the United States and India. And stories about the extraordinary ways one person can introduce another into your life and quietly change the direction of the journey.
At the center of it all were Trish and Terri.
The Woman We Came to Celebrate
The evening belonged to Trish Moran, a woman whose professional life seems to reflect something she also does naturally in friendship: bring people together.
Trish's career has crossed documentary film production, hospitality, marketing, special events, research, public relations, and relationship development. She understands the importance of communication, but even more importantly, she understands connection.
She has described her work as being about connecting the dots to make things happen.
I kept thinking about that phrase throughout the evening.
Because the dots were everywhere.
People from film and television.
People whose careers have helped shape LGBTQ+ representation.
People connected to decades of Hollywood history.
People working across continents in public health and human rights.
Friends who have become part of one another's personal histories.
And people who simply came because they love Trish.
That is part of her gift.
Trish has an energy that draws people into a space. She listens, laughs, connects, remembers, and somehow makes people feel that they belong to the moment.
Her warmth does not demand attention.
It creates it.
And Beside Her, Terri Ford
Standing beside Trish throughout the evening was her wife, Terri Ford, another remarkable woman whose life's work has also been about bringing people together, although often on a global stage where the stakes involve health, dignity, policy, and survival.
Terri has devoted more than three decades to the fight against HIV/AIDS and today serves in senior global advocacy and policy leadership with AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
Her career has taken her far beyond conventional advocacy.
She has been involved in the expansion of HIV treatment and prevention programs internationally, helped develop testing and prevention strategies, worked on initiatives empowering girls and young women, contributed to efforts surrounding access to condoms and menstrual health, and advocated publicly for greater accountability within global health institutions.
Long before many people understood how dramatically HIV treatment would transform, Terri was working within the movement that helped carry those advances into people's lives.
There is something deeply meaningful about seeing that public advocate in a completely different setting.
At The Abbey that evening, Terri was not standing behind a podium or discussing global policy.
She was celebrating the woman she loves.
That distinction matters.
We often know people through their titles, careers, achievements, and public responsibilities. Yet behind every advocate, producer, executive, performer, author, or public figure is a human life composed of friendships, partnerships, laughter, birthdays, dinners, memories, and love.
Sometimes seeing that human dimension tells us as much about a person as any résumé ever could.
Friendship That Became Part of Our Own Story
Terri and Trish have been longtime friends of HRH Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil and me.
Their friendship is not merely part of our social world. It became part of our recorded history.
They are mentioned in our memoir, A Royal Commitment: Ten Years of Marriage and Activism.
When Manvendra and I wrote that book, we understood that we were not simply documenting ten years of marriage.
We were documenting the ecosystem around a marriage.
The friends.
The advocates.
The unexpected allies.
The conversations.
The people who opened doors.
The people who remained when the cameras disappeared.
And the individuals whose lives became intertwined with ours in ways none of us could necessarily have predicted when we first met.
Terri and Trish are part of that story.
That is why celebrating Trish's birthday was about more than attending another Hollywood gathering.
It was about celebrating someone who has walked through part of our own journey.
David Collins and the Power of Representation
Among the guests that evening was David Collins, creator and executive producer of the groundbreaking television franchise Queer Eye.
Few reality television concepts have had the kind of cultural influence that Queer Eye achieved.
The original program and its later Netflix incarnation transformed what might have been presented simply as a makeover show into something much larger.
Through fashion, grooming, food, design, humor, vulnerability, and conversation, audiences around the world encountered gay men not as political abstractions or social controversies, but as human beings entering people's homes and lives.
The idea itself famously emerged from an ordinary social gathering.
David observed a straight woman criticizing her partner for not presenting himself more like the stylish gay men around them.
A moment.
An observation.
An idea.
And eventually, a television format that would reach millions of people.
I find something profound in that.
Creativity does not always arrive announcing itself.
Sometimes the idea capable of changing culture is sitting quietly inside an ordinary conversation.
Someone simply has to notice it.
David has also spoken about faith and his belief that his work can serve as a vessel for something larger than himself.
That concept resonates with me because I increasingly believe that the most meaningful work is rarely about ourselves alone.
It passes through us.
We participate in it.
We carry it for a period of time.
And then it reaches someone we may never meet.
Naomi Grossman and a Friendship Across Continents
Another important thread connecting the evening was our dear friend Naomi Grossman.
Many people know Naomi from her unforgettable portrayal of Pepper in American Horror Story, a performance that required an extraordinary physical transformation and became one of the most recognizable characters associated with the series.
She is an actress, writer, producer, and performer.
But in my life, she occupies another role.
She is my friend.
And the story of that friendship beautifully illustrates what I mean when I talk about life connecting the dots.
Terri and Trish were already dear friends of Naomi.
It was through Terri and Trish that Naomi became connected to Manvendra and me while she was traveling in India.
Earlier this very same year, that introduction carried Naomi all the way to Gujarat, where Manvendra and I had the pleasure of hosting her at The Royal Establishment of Hanumanteshwar.
She entered our world.
She experienced Hanumanteshwar.
She became part of the story unfolding there.
And then, only months later, the direction of hospitality reversed.
I came to Los Angeles.
And Naomi welcomed me into her world in Hollywood.
From Hanumanteshwar to Hollywood
There is something wonderfully poetic about that exchange.
Earlier this year, I was hosting Naomi beside the Narmada in India.
Now, during this chapter of my journey through Los Angeles, Naomi is hosting me in Hollywood.
Even more remarkably, I am staying with her in the residence that Peter Lawford once called home during the final chapter of his life.
And then, at Trish's birthday celebration, another extraordinary connection appeared.
I was able to catch up with Richard, who had once been one of Peter Lawford's agents.
That is when the evening began to feel almost cinematic to me.
Terri and Trish knew Naomi.
They connected Naomi to us in India.
Manvendra and I hosted Naomi at Hanumanteshwar.
Months later, Naomi is hosting me in Hollywood.
I am staying in a residence connected to Peter Lawford.
And at Trish's birthday, I find myself talking with someone who once represented him.
From Hanumanteshwar to Hollywood.
One friendship introducing another.
One place connecting to another.
One story quietly entering the next.
Sometimes I stop trying to explain these things.
I simply observe them.
When History Becomes Personal
Peter Lawford occupies a distinctive place in twentieth-century Hollywood history.
Actor, social figure, member of the Rat Pack, and a man whose personal and professional world intersected with some of the most recognizable personalities of his era, he belongs to what many people now think of as Hollywood mythology.
But history becomes different when it stops being distant.
A building can hold history.
A conversation can hold history.
A person sitting beside you can carry memories of a world that otherwise exists only in photographs, biographies, films, or archives.
Living temporarily within a space connected to that history and then unexpectedly finding myself speaking with someone whose own professional life touched it reminded me again that history is not simply a sequence of dates.
It is human memory traveling forward.
The Part the Photographs Do Not Show
There was another story unfolding that evening, although it may not be visible in the photographs.
I live with spondyloarthritis, a hidden disability.
That means the photographs can show me smiling under the lights of West Hollywood while leaving invisible an entirely different conversation taking place between my mind and my body.
There were moments of struggle.
Living with a condition that can affect mobility, energy, pain, and stamina means I now make calculations that many people around me may never notice.
How long can I stand?
Where can I sit?
How much energy remains?
What is my body telling me?
How far should I push?
What does tomorrow require from what I use tonight?
Hidden disability has changed how I understand photographs.
A photograph can tell the truth.
But it rarely tells the whole truth.
The joy was real.
The struggle was also real.
Neither cancels the other.
I can experience physical limitation and still experience extraordinary happiness.
I can need rest and still want adventure.
I can struggle and still participate.
Sometimes my body asks me to slow down while something deeper inside me continues whispering:
Go live.
Playing My Small Part
As I move through this chapter of my life, I increasingly think of myself as a tiny point of light in time.
Not the center of the universe.
Not someone who needs to understand every destination.
Not someone who controls the pattern.
Simply a soul passing through one moment in an extraordinarily large story.
For this moment, I am here.
For this moment, these friendships are here.
For this moment, our stories have crossed.
And for this moment, I have a part to play.
Living with hidden disability has made that realization even more important.
There are moments when the body can make the world feel smaller.
My soul keeps reminding me that existence remains enormous.
The universe continues unfolding.
People continue appearing.
Doors continue opening.
Friendships continue crossing continents.
And life continues asking me to participate.
I think of that larger movement as Universal Intelligence.
Others may call it God.
Destiny.
Synchronicity.
Consciousness.
Providence.
Coincidence.
Or simply life.
The terminology matters less to me than the lesson.
Pay attention.
Be present.
Receive the moment.
Recognize the light in the people around you.
And allow yourself to become a point of light for someone else.
The People Behind the Accomplishments
Looking around Trish's birthday celebration, I was also reminded how easy it is to define people by what they have accomplished.
David Collins created a television franchise that changed LGBTQ+ representation.
Terri Ford has spent decades fighting HIV/AIDS and advocating for health and dignity around the world.
Naomi Grossman created an unforgettable television character.
Richard carries a personal connection to an era of Hollywood history.
Manvendra has spent much of his life advocating for LGBTQ+ people in India and internationally.
Trish has built a career around producing, hospitality, relationships, events, communication, and bringing people together.
Yet that night, those were not simply professional biographies gathered in one place.
They were people laughing together.
Friends talking.
A wife celebrating her wife.
Old friends reconnecting.
New memories being created.
That may be the part of life we undervalue most.
Achievements become biographies.
Relationships become lives.
Happy Birthday, Trish
And so, after all the Hollywood history, advocacy, television, India connections, philosophical reflections, and unexpected circles, the story returns to the woman whose birthday made the evening possible.
Trish.
Thank you for your warmth.
Thank you for your extraordinary energy.
Thank you for your ability to gather people and somehow make everyone feel part of something.
Thank you for the friendship you and Terri have shared with Manvendra and me.
Thank you for becoming part of the story recorded in A Royal Commitment.
And thank you for giving all of us a reason to stop the noise of the world for a few hours and simply celebrate life.
To Terri, thank you as well for the friendship, the laughter, the advocacy you have carried into the world, and for creating such a beautiful celebration for the woman you love.
It was an honor to celebrate Trish's birthday on her birthday, surrounded by people whose individual journeys have touched culture, advocacy, entertainment, history, and one another.
As I continue my journey through Hollywood, I am gently reminding myself:
You are a peaceful soul.
Lean into your divine being.
Allow Universal Intelligence to guide you.
Play your small part as a point of light in time.
And remember that sometimes the universe does not reveal the path through a map.
Sometimes it reveals it through people.
Sometimes through friendship.
Sometimes across continents.
And sometimes through a birthday celebration at The Abbey, where for a few beautiful hours, all the dots seem to connect.