Jennifer Lopez was all over New York yesterday because Hustlers. Who’s a better ambassador for the film than JLo? As I mentioned the other the day, Hustlers is receiving strong reviews and she’s been getting the strongest reviews. David Sims wrote at The Atlantic yesterday that she is utterly mesmerising in her role. This is a fact: she is f-cking amazing in this role. She’s almost too good in the role in that she makes it look effortless. It’s not effortless. It’s as difficult as Leonardo DiCaprio being cold and acting opposite a digital bear. But this is the thing with Jennifer Lopez: we know she works goddamn hard but because she loves working hard, she makes it seem fun. Do they reward the people who work hard and have fun with it? Or do they reward the ones who turn working hard into its own performance, who make working hard look like it’s an ordeal? Something to discuss when the Show Your Work podcast comes back.
This will be something her team will be thinking about as she is now being talked about as a possibility for an Oscar nomination. Almost every Oscar contender has an Oscar strategy, an Oscar strategist. That’s a real job in Hollywood – people who specialise in designing Oscar campaigns, people hired to manage every day of award season with the ultimate goal: to get their client onstage holding the trophy at the Dolby Theatre. Of course the movie has to be seen by audiences first and projections have been promising with opening weekend predicted to come in between $20-25 million and if it gets to $25 million, it’ll be the best opening of JLo’s career. That would definitely help the campaign.
Of course the best asset to JLo’s campaign is JLo herself. She’s been asked about the Oscar buzz. Hoda Kotb asked her about it the other day – and she got emotional:
My favourite part of that isn’t that she almost started crying. It’s actually just before that, when she laughs and points to the crew after Hoda talked about Oscar and is all like, yep, I’m just as shocked as you guys are, acknowledging that she’s not ever the one who makes a movie and people throw the Oscar word around. She’s not wrong. Which is why I love that she’s calling it out. JLo is too smart to play this any other way. JLo is not going to put on a serious face and turn this into The Struggle The Revenant.
As for those rumours…
There are now rumours that JLo is in talks to headline the halftime show at the Super Bowl. And it’s not a discussion she’s avoiding as she’s on press tour for Hustlers:
Typically, if there’s a no-go zone for a celebrity in an interview, they tell you ahead of time. Or their people do. I’ve been on TIFF for two weeks – I’ve heard this MANY times. And it makes no difference if Ryan Seacrest is there or not. If she didn’t want to talk about the Super Bowl, they wouldn’t have asked about the Super Bowl.
The Super Bowl is on February 2. One week later…it’s the Oscars. Oscar voting ends two days after the Super Bowl. If she actually is nominated for an Oscar and is really doing the Super Bowl, that’s the Oscar campaign gift of a lifetime.
