It was a moment of unexpected drama in a night known for high theatrics.

As a parade of celebrities streamed into the Metropolitan Museum of Art for its annual gala on Monday evening, a horde of police officers tackled a man who was trying to force his way onto the red carpet while carrying a sign attacking Amazon, which was founded by one of the event’s lead sponsors, Jeff Bezos.

The man at the bottom of that pile was Christian Smalls, the renegade labor leader and longtime Amazon antagonist whose progressive politics and personal flair have made him an unlikely celebrity. Since leading a successful effort to unionize an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island in 2022, Smalls has become a known figure in the labor movement and the subject of an acclaimed documentary, “Union.”

His arrest on Monday, however, resulted in a more complicated reaction from the group he once led — the Amazon Labor Union, which is affiliated with the Teamsters. Local union officials effectively disavowed his actions, saying they “were not coordinated with the rank-and-file worker leaders and movement partners currently building a national campaign to take on Amazon.”

The union added, in a statement released on Tuesday, that it doesn’t condone “lone-wolf direct actions which aim to center one individual as the focus of what must be a collective struggle.”

Smalls, 37, was charged with two misdemeanors: trespassing and obstruction of governmental administration, related to his jumping of a police barricade. He spent about 24 hours in custody, before accepting an offer from prosecutors to consider dismissing the charges if he is not arrested again for six months, according to his lawyer, Gideon Oliver.