How Jesse Collins Turned Hollywood’s Go-To Producer

Earlier than producer Robert Townsend selected Jesse Collins to write down for the WB Community comedy “The Mother or father ’Hood” in 1997, the alternatives have been few and much between for the previous radio disc jockey. At that time in Collins’ life, he was submitting unemployment kinds and pretending to take job interviews at Walmart and Chili’s.

However Townsend noticed potential in Collins. From that first break, doorways opened for Collins, main him to develop into Hollywood’s go-to curator of a few of music’s largest moments, from the Grammy Awards to this 12 months’s much-lauded Tremendous Bowl halftime efficiency. For these accomplishments and extra, Collins has been chosen as Selection’s Hitmakers government of the 12 months.

“I’ve been actually fortunate to have a possibility to work on some reveals the place we’ve been in a position to create some moments, and that’s lots of what makes award reveals nice — it’s these once-in-a-lifetime moments of artistry coming collectively,” Collins says.

The producer, who heads Jesse Collins Leisure, earned an Emmy for his work in bringing collectively Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and 50 Cent for the 2022 Tremendous Bowl halftime present, which featured bona fide Southern California legends strutting their stuff at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif.

That’s not luck — that’s the imaginative and prescient Collins has dropped at such main dwell occasions because the Oscars, the Golden Globe Awards and quite a few BET and Soul Practice awards reveals. (For BET, Collins additionally produced the fact sequence “Actual Husbands of Hollywood,” which featured just a few visitor appearances by his former “Mother or father ’Hood” star Faizon Love.)

One standout second that Collins helped carry to the display was Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar’s spectacular opening on the BET Awards in 2016. Queen Bey and her dance troupe waded by way of a pool of shallow water on the stage of L.A.’s Microsoft Theater to carry out her anthemic “Freedom,” and have been finally joined by Lamar.

Collins says his easy secret as a producer is to stay attentive and, if mandatory, a supply of motivation for performers. “It’s actually about serving to an artist create one thing that’s unforgettable,” he says. “Usually, artists all the time have a imaginative and prescient. It’s simply attempting to determine the right way to assist them form that imaginative and prescient right into a TV second.”

Collins is gearing up for a busy awards season early subsequent 12 months. He’ll government produce the Golden Globes on Jan. 10, adopted by the Grammys on Feb. 5. And in his spare time, on Feb. 12, he’ll produce his second consecutive Tremendous Bowl halftime efficiency, this time with Rihanna.

The producer says he’s impressed by the size of leisure nowadays, even at a time of nice disruption. His mantra is to “hold trying ahead” but additionally be sure that he’s “dwelling within the second,” significantly people who he helps craft.

“There’s nice content material on tv and movie proper now,” Collins says. “That’s all that issues. Let’s simply hold specializing in the right way to take what we have now and make it nice.”