New York often ignores them.
The Subway Is Not Exactly an Unusual Choice in New York
The romanticized version of celebrity transportation is easy to imagine.
Black SUV.
Driver.
Tinted windows.
Private entrance.
Perhaps a security team.
But New York City has always disrupted the assumption that wealth automatically makes public transportation unnecessary.
The reason is geography and infrastructure.
For many trips, especially in Manhattan, a car does not automatically provide the fastest or simplest route. Traffic, parking and street congestion can turn relatively short distances into frustrating journeys.
The subway, meanwhile, moves huge numbers of people beneath those streets every day.
Official MTA figures show just how ordinary subway travel remains. New York City Transit recorded nearly 1.3 billion subway rides in 2025, a seven-percent increase from the previous year. On December 11, 2025, daily subway ridership reached approximately 4.65 million customers, a post-pandemic weekday record.
Those numbers make the social-media fascination with Keery's supposed subway ride easier to place in perspective.
Millions of people use the system.
Actors are people who need to travel across the city too.
And Keery is not merely visiting New York for occasional premieres.
Recent profiles identify him as a New York resident.
In a 2025 interview, Esquire reported that Keery was living in New York City even as acting, touring and promotional work regularly took him elsewhere. The Guardian similarly described him as “a New Yorker these days” in a June 2025 profile.
People has also photographed him casually walking around the city on multiple occasions, including in NoHo in February 2024 and during an earlier outing in August 2023.
Seen from that perspective, using the subway does not necessarily represent some extraordinary rejection of celebrity luxury.
It may simply represent living in New York.
Why the Internet Still Finds It Fascinating
If public transportation is so normal in New York, why would an image like this attract attention?
Part of the answer lies in the enormous gap between how audiences imagine celebrity life and how much of it can still be mundane.
Viewers generally see actors under artificial circumstances.
They see premieres.
Magazine shoots.
Award shows.
Television interviews.
Movie sets.
Concert stages.
Those situations are designed to make the person look exceptional.
Red carpets in particular create an illusion that celebrity life exists in a separate universe of designer clothes, photographers, assistants and security.
Keery himself appeared at the Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills in January 2026, photographed in formal Louis Vuitton clothing under the intense lighting of one of Hollywood's most visible awards ceremonies. Only a short time later, social media users were circulating an image said to show him sitting among ordinary subway passengers.
The contrast is almost perfectly designed for the internet.
One day, a celebrity can be photographed by professional entertainment photographers.