Jennifer Lopez says the National Football League tried to sanitize one of the strongest political messages of her 2020 Super Bowl set with Shakira.
Towards the end of her new Netflix documentary Halftime, which chronicles the months-long creative process that went into the historic co-headlining set at the Miami-based sporting event, Lopez recalls that the NFL was unhappy with the direction of her segment and attempted to change it just one day prior to the live broadcast.
“We left rehearsal and I noticed everybody was freaking out, but I don’t know why. I get a call from [manager] Benny [Medina] 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,’” she explains. She’s referencing a moment of the show that saw her daughter, Emme, singing her mother’s 2000 hit “Let’s Get Loud” from inside a cage — a moment many interpreted as a comment on the Trump administration’s immigration injustices.
