Like it or not, Buble says every part of Junos hosting gig was his idea
Posted Apr 21, 2013 11:12:49 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
REGINA – Whether you liked Michael Buble as host of the Juno Awards or not, there’s only one person who deserves the credit — or blame.
“They honestly let me have carte blanche,” he said backstage after the show on Sunday. “They let me write every joke, every intro I did, I got to walk out there and feel totally controlled.
“Basically everything you saw tonight,” he added, “everything you heard me say, every joke, every weird face, every One Direction nerdiness that I did was basically me up there hoping that it would work.”
And he feels it did, saying after the show that he thought the quick-paced ceremony was “successful.”
Among the highlights? An opening sketch featuring a series of celebrity cameos — actor Gerard Butler, comedian Russell Peters, boy band One Direction, talk-show hosts Kelly Ripa and Dr. Phil, who Buble admitted backstage had little understanding of the Canadiana he was spouting in the recorded bit but was a good sport anyway — and a backstage skit with the Sheepdogs, where the Saskatoon natives took a Roughriders jersey-clad Buble to task for pandering.
But for the Burnaby, B.C., crooner, his favourite bit came with the involvement of his pregnant wife, Luisana Lopilato, who stared at him sternly after he made an off-colour remark about pop singer Carly Rae Jepsen’s onstage outfit, then motioned that she would slit his throat.
“Tells you how much a better actor she is than me,” he said.
Otherwise, he adored the Sheepdogs performance and the speech k.d. lang gave after being inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.
He admitted to some jitters prior to the performance, which his wife found difficult to understand.
“She said, ‘Why are you nervous? It’s a huge world. And Canada is just one small country in this huge world,'” he recalled. “I said to her, I know it is, but I’m Canadian. So truly these are my peers and it meant probably more to me than most anything else I’ve done.”
So, he’s satisfied with how things went. Still, he doesn’t expect that everyone else will be, and he’s not ducking from criticism.
“Like I said before, it’s a hard gig man,” he said. “It’s tough to win. You can’t make everybody happy. So I just tried to go out there and not take myself too seriously. But at the same time, I didn’t want to make a joke about everything.
“Look it, tonight I was comfortable. As comfortable as I’ve ever been onstage. I’m built for this. And if I’m prepared, it’s going to be a lot of fun for me. And I really, really wanted to be prepared.”
