Jennifer Lopez says performing with Shakira at the Super Bowl was 'beautiful' and proved that Latin culture is 'nothing to be afraid of'

• Jennifer Lopez said performing with Shakira at the Super Bowl was "beautiful."
• Lopez previously said making two Latina artists share the stage was the "worst idea in the world."

Jennifer Lopez expressed a new perspective on sharing the stage with Shakira at the 2020 Super Bowl in a recent interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe.

She said that sharing one of the biggest performances of her life with Shakira was "a beautiful thing" because they're "both moms and both Latinas...not exactly what you would expect at the Superbowl halftime show."

While preparing for the event, as documented in her 2022 Netflix documentary film "Halftime," Lopez said it was "the worst idea in the world" for the NFL to ask two performers to share the headlining spot at one of the biggest musical events of the year.

Lopez's longtime manager Benny Medina explained in the film that Lopez's remarks were not directed at Shakira personally. He suggested that his client was likely commenting on what she perceived as racial bias against herself and Shakira by the NFL because they were Latinas.

"Typically, you have one headliner at a Super Bowl," said Medina. "That headliner constructs a show, and, should they choose to have other guests, that's their choice. It was an insult to say you needed two Latinas to do the job that one artist historically has done."

As viewers saw in "Halftime," Shakira and Lopez were only given six minutes each to perform their respective biggest hits. Past headliners of the Super Bowl halftime show, including white women like Lady Gaga and Gwen Stefani, were given a full 13 to 14 minutes and allowed to invite guests of their choice instead of being told to share top billing.

"If it was going to be a double headliner, they should have given us 20 minutes," Lopez told Shakira at one point in "Halftime."

"We have to have our singing moments," she said. "It's not going to be a dance fucking revue. We have to sing our message," she told her music director Kim Burse at one point in the film.

Lopez told Lowe in her recent interview that putting the show together caused her "a lot of stress." But, she was passionate about it because she wanted to celebrate herself and her Latin culture on one of the biggest stages in the world.

She said she wanted to show people that "I'm a mother and I'm sexy. And I'm tough and I am vulnerable," while also making her Puerto Rican community proud.

Lopez said that at the time she and Shakira felt a "huge responsibility" to "show people what Latinos are."

"We're beautiful and strong and happy and....you know what I mean? There's nothing to be afraid of," she said, noting that at the time, there was "a lot going on" in the country related to the Latin community. She's presumably referring to former president Donald Trump's immigration policy, which separated children from their parents at the border of the US and Mexico.

Lopez's part of the show featured children in cages to make a "statement" about what was going on, she told Lowe. As seen on "Halftime," she and her team had to argue with the NFL to let her keep the cages in the show.

"For me, this isn't about politics. This is about human rights. 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," Lopez said in the film.

"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.'"