Yahoo News Inside Lizzo’s TV Takeover: ‘Put Some Respect on My Name’
Though she had already begun documenting her meteoric 2019 breakout when Live Nation asked her about becoming the subject of a documentary, pop-rap superstar Lizzo said, “We didn’t really know what it was gonna be about. I was afraid it would be boring.” Three years, two Grammy-winning albums, and one historic, Emmy-winning reality competition series later, her Max film “Love, Lizzo” proved that her life has been anything but.
Looking cozy on a long brown leather sofa inside a Burbank recording studio, wearing an all-black Yitty ensemble she had previewed on Instagram an hour before the interview, Lizzo told IndieWire that the original concept for her documentary was to take the footage they had of her planning her 2019 Coachella and VMAs sets (a process that inspired her Prime Video series “Watch Out For The Big Grrls“) and bring in director Doug Pray (“Hype!”) to help tell her origin story, and film the lead up to a massive homecoming show at the Houston Rodeo.
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“And then the COVID lockdown happened, and Doug had just signed on and was like, ‘This is a completely different documentary now,’” said Lizzo. With live performances including the rodeo show canceled, the musician leaned into working on “Special,” the follow up to her RIAA-certified platinum major debut. “I really have to give a lot of credit to Doug Pray. We just have copious amounts of footage of me—some of it might be very boring,” she said with a laugh. “But he turned it into this wonderful documentary that tells my story, but also documents this high that I was on from 2019 to 2020, the COVID lockdown, and how that changed me as a person into the making of ‘Special,’ all simultaneously, which I think is really difficult to do. And he pulled it off really beautifully.”
A simple way to put it is Lizzo begins the film in a one bedroom, one bathroom rental apartment in Silver Lake, and ends the film in the first-ever house she bought. However, “Love, Lizzo” an Emmy contender for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special, also shows how the stakes grow as the spotlight on her gets brighter. “[As] my profile had risen a little bit more, I was receiving a lot of public backlash, and the public perception of me was starting to piss me off, really,” Lizzo said. The film not only shows all the concern trolling about her weight, (which had again caused her to momentarily lock her Twitter account a day before her conversation with IndieWire), but some of the critique leveled at her from the Black community saying she’s only focused on making music for a white audience.
“People don’t really know how talented I am, and how much I put my blood, sweat and tears into all of this. And it was actually really affirming to sit and be like, ‘Yo, nah, I want you to come see me get on this plane from Austin, and fly to LA, get off of this plane, and go straight to the studio and master my album, no sleep,” said the star. “I think the exact words to the doc team were, ‘I need people to put some respect on my name.’”
While everything is said in good humor, Lizzo takes her artistry very seriously, so the pivot to filming the making of “Special” suited her goals. “I want the world to know how I come up with lyrics and melodies, and how I produce, and why it says executive produced by Lizzo on my albums, and how hard I work, and how little I sleep, and how much I care about people and my team,” she said. “And I did want to document that, not just for the world to see, but for me to have as a diary in the future to look back on.”
She added, “It’s nice to document because I’m doing pretty legendary things, and I want to be able to look back on it one day and be like, ‘Wow, that’s how that happened.’ Because I love looking back at videos of Bob Mackie and Cher, and I’m like, ‘Wow, they threw that look together,’ and in the moment it feels pretty like, ‘Oh, this is just my gown for the day.’ But 20 years later it’s an iconic reference. So you never know what kind of iconoclasm you’re creating.”
Lizzo did think getting the offer to do an HBO concert special was instantly iconic though, especially since it was concurrent with the documentary. “They were like, ‘Can you give us a doc and a concert special?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, we can do anything,” she said exuberantly. “I had the package deal, baby! I was preparing for it.”
Eligible for the Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded) Emmy, “Lizzo: Live In Concert” captures the final night of the first leg of her Special Tour, shot by Done+Dusted in Los Angeles. “They came to a bunch of shows prior to that show to just understand how I move on the stage, all the angles and dangles. And we got SZA, Cardi B, and Missy Elliott. Like what?! Just the coolest people, and we put on a show I’m really proud of,” said Lizzo. “I want to do more of that because I’ll tell you what, my albums are good, but my live show is even better. And people really get it when they see me live.”
But Lizzo’s TV takeover did not stop there. Since winning the Emmy for Outstanding Competition Program last September with “Watch Out For The Big Grrls,” the first streaming series to do so, Lizzo also guest starred on the latest seasons of “The Mandalorian” and “The Simpsons,” with both series submitting her for Emmy consideration in the respective categories of Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series and Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance. “It does seem ‘OK, our first foray into television, we won an Emmy, so let’s just keep doing TV.’ But that’s not the case at all,” she said.
Having been put on to the Star Wars franchise by her late father, Lizzo joked that she “exploded into confetti” receiving the call from “The Mandalorian” creator Jon Favreau. However, the Season 3 episode “Guns For Hire,” where she plays the Duchess of Plazir opposite on-screen spouse Jack Black, was filmed before her Emmy win. Similarly, “The Simpsons” producers had been aware for a while that she was a fan willing to collaborate, “but the script had to be just right, and they came to us with like this perfect script,” said Lizzo. Voicing magical elf Goobie-Woo, who guides Homer through an “It’s a Wonderful Life” appraisal of his relationship to Marge in the 750th episode of the FOX mainstay, “was all just right time, right creative. We just went for it, and everything happened to drop all at the same time.”
“I never thought in a million years this is how I would be on TV, but here I am,” Lizzo said about her big TV year. More importantly, she has been able to incorporate her musicianship into it all. “Music is always gonna be priority number one, and home for me, and everything that I do is going to have some sort of tie to my music,” said the “About Damn Time” singer. “Even in ‘Mandalorian,’ I’m playing flute in the background, which was really cool. And Goobie-Woo and Homer sang, and Sasha Flute was featured on the episode.” Though she is grateful for her TV work, Lizzo appreciates that her artistry is not limited to just that. “I don’t feel like I need to do TV. I only do it if I want to, and if it’s right, and if I feel like it. Let’s keep it real.”
Citing the immortal words of one Blue Ivy, Lizzo said “I’m really just dreaming bigger, and I’ve taken the ceiling off of my goals—like I’ve never seen a ceiling in my whole life.” So yes, she has thought about pursuing the other two awards she would need to EGOT. “I am very talented and capable of whatever it takes to be [at the] Tonys. I was writing musicals in high school based off of operas that I loved by Rossini and Russian romance composers,” said Lizzo. “When it comes to Oscars, I love film, and I’ve been actually making music for films. Even with the Barbie movie coming out, it’s really exciting—not to jump any conclusions or anything.”
For her, talent and self-determination are not the issue, it’s finding purpose. “If I just do things just to do them, it’s not going to hit. It’s not gonna feel right. It’s not gonna work. And I think that at the heart of everything I do, I have to feel like it, and it has to vibrate with me, and it has to make sense, and it has to do something for the world,” Lizzo said. Plus, “you know I’m gonna be extra. Whatever I’m doing, I’m producing it, I’m working on it behind the scenes, I’m staying up till 2:00 AM sweating over it. That’s the only way this shit matters to me. So could I win an EGOT? I’m talented as hell. Yeah. Is that the goal? I think the goal is projects first. Passion first. And we’ll see.”
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