Archive for Behind the Scenes

I never thought I’d find myself hosting a purple carpet premiere for a 16 year olds bio pic. Never Say Never. When the execs from Paramount Studio told me that they were going to simulcast our live stream on the big screens of the Nokia Live in LA where the premiere was held and on the big screens in New York City’s Times Square and Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square it seemed exceptional on a lot of levels. Then they brought me into a screening room to see the movie and I understood why they were pulling out all the stops.

The fact that my co-host for it was iJustine (who happens to be one of my favorite personalities) and that our show was going to be the exclusive live stream of the event made it even more exciting. Nothing gets my adrenaline going quite like doing a live show. When I arrived at Nokia for rehearsals they were still putting the finishing touches on the set up which included a purple carpet that ended up being a worldwide trending topic on Twitter once we went live. I even made a point of wearing a light purple shirt to go with it! My team and I had a good laugh about it in my trailer once I put it on cause I usually don’t even get a Christmas tree when the holidays come around.

If I have caught a case of Bieber fever, it definitely came in handy hosting this. When your first guest of the night is Rico Rodriguez from Modern Family and he runs with your suggestion to rap Ludacris’ verse from Baby, you know it’s about to be a special night. The purple carpet filled up with stars fast and the turn out was no coincidence: Rob Dyrdek told me the Biebs personally called him about coming and Francia Raisa told me Justin made a point of telling her to wear purple. One star who I can’t imagine will ever take direction on what to wear is young Willow Smith. Her unique style was on display once again so I asked her ”What’s the inspiration for your style” and she replied, “My mind.”

Talking to the guys that brought Justin into the spotlight was especially cool for me cause Scooter Braun and Usher have been friends of mine for years. When Scooter came up to our platform we celebrated like we had just won the Super Bowl. The head of Justin’s record label, the legendary LA Reid, admitted something to me that you actually won’t see in the movie. LA told me that he probably would’ve probably passed on Justin if he had known that most of the other record labels passed on him before Usher came into the picture.

Besides all the talk about the movie and it’s story, I had an interesting conversation with The Dream about the next chapter in Justin’s story and the music they’re working on now being more edgy. He said “If I can get away with edgy, I would love it.” I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully there’s a sequel.