A new event named after the beloved hot dog topped with meat sauce, diced onions and yellow mustard is about to play a big role in Motor City youth arts education.
The Children’s Foundation of Michigan and actor Marc Evan Jackson (“The Good Place,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”) announced Wednesday morning, July 17, that a celebrity homecoming called The Coney will be happening here Sept. 25-26 with a star-studded cast of Detroit and southeast Michigan natives.
The host committee for the benefit weekend includes “Saturday Night Live” alum Tim Meadows, “Detroiters” and “Veep” star Sam Richardson, married actors Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, Oscar winner J.K. Simmons and “NCIS” veteran Diona Reasonover, along with The Coney founder Jackson. Other well-known names are expected to be announced soon.
The presenting sponsor will be Rocket Companies.
The goals of The Coney, which is designed to take place annually, are to raise urgently needed money for arts programs for young people across Detroit and also to build an endowed fund for future generations.
For the inaugural event, the stars will be appearing Sept. 26 at a music-and-comedy show at the Detroit Opera House. A limited number of tickets will go on sale June 24 at noon through the Detroit Opera House.
“I think there are going to be a lot of laughs,” says Jackson of the Opera House evening. “We’ve been referring to it for months now as a big, fun messy variety show, sort of along the lines of a Dean Martin roast.”
He is hoping maybe Bell, who grew up in Huntington Woods and was the voice of Anna in the Disney mega-hit “Frozen,” will perfom a song, or that Broadway luminary Renee Elise Goldsberry, a Cranbrook Schools graduate (and not officiallly announced as a guest so far) will sing something from “Hamilton.”
Other activities for the debut weekend will include the first pitch ceremony at a Detroit Tigers game and visits to local youth programs, plus a private welcome party on Friday where the hosts will meet community leaders, sponsors and supporters.
For Jackson, The Coney is the latest, biggest chapter in his longstanding commitment to helping Detroit youth. A native of New York state, Jackson graduated from Calvin University in Grand Rapids and was a member in the late 1990s of the now-defunct Second City Detroit, a satellite troupe of the Chicago original that served as a career launching pad for Richardson, Tim Robinson and Keegan-Michael Key, among others.
In 2011, a decade after he relocated to Los Angeles, Jackson and his wife, metro Detroit native Beth Hagenlocker, founded the Detroit Creativity Project to empower and inspire the city’s young people through the arts. The DCP brings improv lessons to Detroit schools, giving student an opportunity to stretch their imaginations and build self-confidence, empathy and other career and life skills.
“There’s just so much to celebrate about the city, and we have such a fondness for the city and the people, especially its youth, that yes, this is absolutely a culmination of the … relationships I have made over the years at the DCP,” says Jackson of The Coney.
The origin story of The Coney goes back to last September’s Detroit Homecoming event and a dinner held by the Skillman Foundation, where Children’s Foundation of Michigan President and CEO Andrew Stein (whose teenage daughter is a huge “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” fan) had a conversation with Jackson.
Jackson told Stein his idea about creating a celebrity weekend for Detroit as a fundraiser for youth arts education. Stein immediately saw the natural fit with the Children’s Foundation, a grant-making public charity that raises money to distribute to groups that benefit the health and well-being of kids.
“I said ‘I think we might be uniquely positioned as the right partner to take on this entrepreneurial idea,’” remembers Stein.
The Coney is modeled after Kansas City’s The Big Slick, an annual celebrity weekend launched in 2010 and currently hosted by actor and “SNL” alum Rob Riggle, “Ted Lasso” star Jason Sudeikis, comic actor and “Ant-Man” Marvel franchise player Paul Rudd, David Koechner of the “Anchorman” movies, Eric Stonestreet of the classic sitcom “Modern Family” and “SNL” alum Heidi Gardner.
The Big Slick has raised more than $30 million for Children’s Mercy, an independent children’s health organization with not-for-profit hospitals and specialty clinics in Missouri and Kansas. The May 2026 gathering raised more than $4 million alone, some of it through a live auction that drew $100,000 for Paul Rudd’s invitations to the red carpet and world premiere of “Avengers: Doomsday” (which hits theaters Dec. 18) and $360,000 for Jason Sudeikis’ donation of tickets to a screening for the fourth season of “Ted Lasso.”
Stein, who attended this year’s Big Slick, says the Kansas City version has shared its playbook with The Coney. In addition to the famous hosts of The Big Slick, the event attracts dozens of their friends and co-workers, a list that includes Adam Scott, Damon Wayans Jr., singer Sheryl Crow, CNN’s Jake Tapper and “SNL” alum Ego Nwodim.
Stein hopes to attract a similarly extended list of names to The Coney. When asked about Jason Sudeikis, one of the executive producers and guest star of “Detroiters,” possibly coming next year, he quips with a laugh, “Why not this year?”
The Coney’s Detroit hosts, who all have ample hometown pride, are eagerly spreading the word about The Coney to their famous pals, which could lead to some surprise appearances. Says Jackson: “It’s something we’ve all been looking for opportunities to do because word is out about Detroit. I get stopped on set, in restaurants and hotels, in airports from time to time by people going, “Hey, you have a Detroit connection, right? … We’re hearing great things.'”
Adds Jackson: “Ted Danson said that to me not terribly long ago. I think he’s shooting season three of ‘A Man on the Inside’ during The Coney Weekend so I’m not sure he and Mary Steenburgen can be here. But I’m still working on it.”
Jackson and his fellow stars are passionate about arts education and the role it played in many of their own lives. Says Stein: “We know access to arts education and youth development programs, that’s all part of what makes kids healthy. They need access and deserve access to those sort of programs. They’re chronically underfunded.”
The Coney expects to award grants by the end of 2026 for immediate impact on the community and to focus on long-term sustainability through creating the Endowed Fund for Youth Arts, established at the Children’s Foundation of Michigan.
The immediate funds will be going to a wide variety of groups, not just to the DCP, at the insistence of Jackson and Hagenlocker. “To Marc and Beth’s credit, they wanted this to be about all the other amazing programs as well that they know about in the city and don’t know about (yet),” says Stein.
While the stars will draw media coverage, Stein and Jackson want the event to shine a national spotlight on the good work happening in schools, neighborhoods and community centers for Detroit youth. Jackson says it was clear to him that The Coney should aim big and reach all sorts of programs for all kinds of arts, from music and dance to poetry and digital media and so on.
“The arts are not an extra. … The arts are an essential element of what it means to be human,” he stresses. “The arts teach you how to learn. They teach you that uncertainty is everywhere, and that, with a couple of skills and a good attitude approaching it, the unknown is not so scary.”
For more information on The Coney and how to get involved, go to theconeydetroit.org.
Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Star-studded celebrity fundraiser The Coney coming to Detroit in Sept.
Reporting by Julie Hinds, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Julie Hinds, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
