Jennifer Lopez

As a young girl, Jennifer Lopez dreamed of being a performer. Over the course of her multifaceted career she has been a dancer, singer, actress, mentor and executive producer. Her company Nuyorican Productions has established a roster of TV and film credits, including Shades of Blue, which airs on NBC. Lopez plays Detective Harlee Santos opposite Ray Liotta as Lieutenant Matt Wozniak, who often leads his team to operate outside of the law. During one illegal job, Santos is caught by the FBI and turned informant. Lopez talks to World Screen about this intriguing, complex character, her role as executive producer and her philanthropic initiatives.

WS: How did you first hear about Shades of Blue?
LOPEZ: My producing partner had been developing it for about a year, with the creator Adi Hasak, and she brought it to me to produce with her. We started developing it over the next two and a half years. We pitched it in the room to NBC, which was probably our first or second pitch. They said, Why aren’t you doing the lead in this? And I thought, Yeah, it’s a great role. I guess I had thought about playing Harlee because I helped develop the character in many ways, but I hadn’t committed to or attached myself as an actor to the project. Then they brought that up and said, We’ll do 13 episodes right now if you play the lead. It was a decision to be made in that moment, and I thought, There aren’t a lot of great roles for women in film right now, this would be a great thing for me to do, and I could produce it as well. There were so many pluses to it that I decided that it was something I wanted to do.

WS: Shades of Blue airs on a broadcast network, but it has a cable series feel.
LOPEZ: That was one of our goals. When we spoke to NBC, they were totally on board with that. Television is so exceptional right now—it’s like movies on TV—and broadcast needs to compete with cable in that sense, so we thought, How edgy can we be? How much can we push the envelope and make this feel like a cable show, and compete, quality-wise, with all that’s going on and bring the show to a broader audience on broadcast? We wanted to do that, and I think we’ve accomplished that.

WS: What appealed to you about the character of Harlee Santos, and what’s been her journey so far? It was an incredible first season.
LOPEZ: It was insane! I just loved the idea, from the beginning, of the family. Even though they were cops, it felt a bit like the Mafia—there was so much loyalty. Harlee herself was strong in her conviction, even though she was walking this tightrope of what’s right and wrong on a bigger moral level. But she was also trying to keep all sides going: walking on the FBI side, on the side of her loyalty to her family [of cops], and then there’s her loyalty to herself and her child. As an actress, that was such a compelling thing to play. She had that one thing that mattered more than anything, which was her daughter. It was so challenging, Harlee juggling this life, that it was just a real treat to play her.

WS: Harlee seemed tormented a lot of the time. She was trying to keep all those balls in the air and not let on what was going on.
LOPEZ: As the title says, shades of blue—it’s those gray areas: what’s right and what’s wrong, and doing the wrong things for the right reasons, and how good she was. The FBI targeted her because she was so good at keeping things under control—which is hard for me to play because I’m a very emotional person. She was great at playing both sides of the fence and lying and keeping her calm. You never knew if she was lying and that was a challenge for me because I’m a terrible liar in real life! There were so many nuances in each scene I played, sometimes I just didn’t know what the hell was going on! But I went with my instincts of what I felt she would do.

WS: Tell me a little bit about your relationship with Ray. You two have incredible chemistry on screen.
LOPEZ: He and I were the most unlikely pair, as he would tell you, but something happened when we got in our first scene together, there was this instant chemistry. There was instant respect for one another and one another’s previous work. And in the room, his presence as a person and my presence as a person—there was just something that happened where we fell right into our roles so easily around each other. We were lucky to have that type of chemistry right from the beginning.

WS: You are one of the executive producers of the show, so, aside from being one of the stars, how many more responsibilities do you have?
LOPEZ: We have so many responsibilities as producers. Every single little aspect, from developing the script in the beginning to giving notes all through the process, but also [checking what’s happening] in front of the camera, behind the scenes, bringing that whole group together, then making sure that’s functioning properly every day. I’m the most on-set producer that there is probably besides David DeClerque, who’s there all the time. We’re watching everything that’s happening and making sure everything goes well. Is the scene working? Are we in the right setting? And helping the directors because we have one director every two episodes, so they’re coming into “our world.” They depend on me—not as the star of the show, but also as a producer—to say, Does this seem right? This is good, but this doesn’t feel as good. I think we should do it like this. Harlee would do this. Woz would be more like this. And then also managing all those personalities, making sure everybody’s getting along and feels good and is doing their best work. A producer’s responsibilities are varied; it’s not just the script, and it’s not just story, which is one of the most important things, but all of these pieces have to come together to make a great show.

WS: What types of projects does your production company look for?
LOPEZ: My producing partner, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, will bring me lots of different ideas, and some I respond to immediately and I feel are not just on-brand, but I respond to viscerally as a person, as an artist, and that’s how we choose. She comes up with a bunch of different ideas and a lot of different things come across our desks, and you just go with your gut. What do you respond to? What do you feel you have something to contribute to? And that’s what we go with. It could be so many different things.

WS: You were one of the first artists who crossed over from the Latino market to the mainstream market. How do you continue to serve your fans in both markets?
LOPEZ: I always, from the beginning, identified so much with my Puerto Rican roots, but I also felt very American, so it was a very natural thing for me to feel both. I don’t really differentiate, and I think [the audience does] not differentiate either. I am who I am, and I’m very strong in that, and that means I am Puerto Rican, and I am American because I was born in New York. I’m a New Yorker and grew up in the Bronx; that’s very much part of who I am as well. I just take that into all my projects, and I don’t try to be anything but myself.

WS: Do you consider yourself a singer first and then an actress? Or do you see yourself as an artist?
LOPEZ: I think I’d go with an artist and an entertainer. I sing, I dance, I act, I produce and I create, that’s what I do on many different levels. That [filters into] branding and all kinds of things: creating perfumes and clothing lines and different ways I [see] the world. At the end of the day, I’m an artist. I do see myself as an entertainer first—as an actress, a singer and a dancer—and from that, all other things are created.

WS: You do a lot of charity work. Why is this important to you?
LOPEZ: I’d always been involved with the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles before I had children, but once I had children I just felt a larger responsibility to the world and to making things better and using my voice for more good things in the world. The Lopez Family Foundation was something my sister and I started. At that time, we were both pregnant and thought about the kind of world we wanted our kids to live in. And, I don’t know, I just like doing good things. I like feeling like I’m doing something good, and I want to make the world a better place, in my own way. When I make a song like “Love Make the World Go Round,” [recorded with Lin-Manuel Miranda, with proceeds going to people impacted by the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando] that’s about me wanting to put a positive message into the world about love in a time when there is a lot of fear and violence going on. It’s just a part of who I am; it comes naturally. You find the time to do things that are important to you and that you feel in your heart that you want to do. Between being a single mom, and making a living, and doing what I have to do, I like to find time to do things that contribute to the world that I live in, and make it a better place, and make people feel happy. I feel like I do that with my entertaining, but there are also other ways, like working with the United Nations and the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the Make-A-Wish Foundation, utilizing my celebrity and my fame and my voice for something positive.

WS: I know you care a lot about girls, and given that your celebrity makes you a role model, what message do you have for girls nowadays?
LOPEZ: The most important thing is equality—making my daughter feel that she is equal to any other person in the world, any man, anybody, that her worth and her value are so strong and so big that she can accomplish anything she wants. My work with the United Nations is about that as well. There is no country in the world where women are equal, but striving toward and changing that consciousness is going to make our world a much better place. That’s a long-term goal because changing people’s thinking is very difficult, but we do it little by little every day by learning to love ourselves and learning our own worth and values.

WS: Do you feel that television, American Idol and Shades of Blue, allows you to strengthen the relationship you have with your fans?
LOPEZ: I do it because of the art of it. I loved being on American Idol and talking about music. I loved mentoring kids. I loved being part of that dream-making franchise. That was a gift to me. I felt so great to be a part of that. As far as Shades, I do it because I loved the project to begin with. But right now, I feel like we’re in the golden age of television; it’s better than it’s ever been: the quality, the reach of what we’re doing, it’s just amazing to be a part of that with Shades of Blue. It makes me feel like I’m in the right place at the right time, stretching my limits as an artist, but also reaching people on a bigger level than you could anywhere else.