Two years ago, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira made headlines for their dazzling performance at the 2020 Super Bowl Halftime Show. However, in her upcoming Netflix documentary Halftime, Lopez admits that she had previously resented the National Football League for hiring two entertainers for the show.
Jennifer Lopez Says Having Two People do the Super Bowl was “The Worst Idea in the World”
The new documentary premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival in New York. During one scene, Lopez plans the halftime show with her music director Kim Burse. But the two are stressed over Lopez’s limited time slot. “We have six f—ing minutes. We have 30 seconds of a song, and if we take a minute, that’s it, we’ve got five left. But, there’s got to be certain songs that we sing, though. We have to have our singing moments. It’s not going to be a dance f—ing revue. We have to sing our message,” Lopez says to Burse. “This is the worst idea in the world to have two people do the Super Bowl. It was the worst idea in the world.” [1]
In a separate interview, Jennifer Lopez’s manager, Benny Medina, also laments over the NFL picking two music icons for the performance. “Typically, you have one headliner at a Super Bowl. That headliner constructs a show, and, should they choose to have other guests, that’s their choice,” Medina says. “It was an insult to say you needed two Latinas to do the job that one artist historically has done.”
In contrast, Madonna and Lady Gaga each performed solo at the Super Bowl for 14 minutes and 15 minutes. Similarly, This year’s halftime show, with Snoop Dogg, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar, Mary J. Blige, and Dr. Dre was about 14 minutes.
Moreover, there’s a scene in Halftime where Lopez discusses the timing issue with Shakira, who says, “I know that the Super Bowl people want us to be weaved throughout the show. I haven’t had a confirmation about how many minutes I’m going to have.”
So Jennifer Lopez responds: “Let me address that really quick. They said 12 minutes. I got kind of a good confirmation that we could have an extra minute or two, so now we’re at, like, 13, 14 minutes. I think, Shakira, what we should have is you should have half the time and I should [have half]”. Then, she adds, “If it was going to be a double-headliner, they should have given us 20 minutes. That’s what they should’ve f—ing done.” [2]
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“The Super Bowl is tomorrow and we’re not changing anything”
Moreover, Halftime goes on to show Lopez’s creative process behind her part in the show. One highlight of the show featured her daughter, Emme, singing her mother’s hit single “Let’s Get Loud” while sitting in a cage. At this point, Jennifer Lopez indirectly comments on the U.S. government’s treatment of Mexican children at the border. However, the NFL tried to cut this scene just before the show. “We left rehearsal and I noticed everybody was freaking out, but I don’t know why,” Lopez remembers. “I get a call from Benny and he’s like, ‘They want to pull the cages.’ That night, the higher-ups at the NFL saw it for the first time and they’re like, ‘Hey, you can’t do that.”
Meanwhile, Medina adds, “The NFL had a real concern about making a political statement about immigration. They looked at the plans, and the message was absolute. They did not want those cages in the show. That had come down from the highest authority.”
But Lopez refused to do the show without the cages. “For me, this isn’t about politics. This is about human rights,” she says. “I’m facing the biggest crossroads of my life, to be able to perform on the world’s biggest stage, but to take out the cages and sacrifice what I believe in would be like never being there at all. There was a part of me that just got very zen and I was just like, ‘Benny I don’t care what you have to do, we’re not changing the show. The Super Bowl is tomorrow and we’re not changing anything.‘” [3]
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Sources
- “Jennifer Lopez says co-headlining Super Bowl halftime was ‘worst idea in the world’.” Los Angeles Times. Nardine Saad. June 10, 2022
- “Jennifer Lopez Felt Sharing Super Bowl Stage With Shakira Was ‘Worst Idea In The World’.” HuffPost. Curtis M. Wong. June 10, 2022
- “Jennifer Lopez thought NFL using 2 Super Bowl halftime headliners was ‘worst idea in the world’.” Entertainment Weekly. Joey Nolfi. June 8, 2022