Cuban-American singer Gloria Estefan said Tuesday that she was invited to sing at Super Bowl LIV alongside Jennifer Lopez and Shakira but decided to decline the invitation.
In the program Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Estefan was asked if she had been invited to be at the Super Bowl LIV halftime show with the two singers, to which she replied yes but that she declined because it was JLo and Shakira’s time. Also, she joked that she didn’t want to go on a diet before the show.
“It was their time (from JLo and Shakira), they were into something completely different. I already did a couple of Super Bowls, (and) I didn’t want to be on a diet in December,” Estefan commented.
Estefan’s statement comes after JLo’s comments in the new documentary went viral Halftime, which primarily shows the six-month period between Jennifer Lopez’s 50th birthday and her Super Bowl performance alongside Shakira in February 2020.
In the documentary, Lopez explicitly mentions that doing a Super Bowl with two artists “is the worst idea in the world.” She says this not to complain about sharing the stage with Shakira, but about the little time that the two artists would be given to express their message to the world, in a show that is already short in itself (12 minutes in total).
In Tuesday’s interview, Estefan references this timing situation, saying that “you have very little time, something like 12 minutes, to get everything ready on and off stage.”
“Could you have done it (the Super Bowl halftime show) with just one person? Yeah, but I think they wanted to put on a great Latin and Miami show, they wanted to pack it in as much as possible, and I think they totally pulled it off, they did a impressive show,” added Estefan.