It's the most wonderful time of the year! No, not Christmas...It's MMVA time! For a MuchMusic VJ, the month of June is magical as we prepare for the biggest party of the summer: The MuchMusic Video Awards.
This will be my third year co-hosting the show and I'm so pumped to be working alongside our celebrity co-host, PSY. I think he's about to bring the most humour we've ever had at the MMVAs. PSY has transcended "one-hit wonder" status and is making his Canadian television debut at the MMVAs. I can guarantee he'll get the whole country doing the Gangnam Style -- it may even break records.
This year's lineup is star studded with artists like Demi Lovato and Phillip Phillips making their debut on the MMVA stage. Ed Sheeran is back once again to pull on our heart strings. We've got Avril Lavigne making her fifth appearance, as well as other stellar Canadians like Classified and Serena Ryder causing a raucous on stage too.
But what do I do from now until show time on June 16th? Well, pretty much two weeks out from the event, every hour of my day is scheduled with something related to the MuchMusic Video Awards.
I just went through a few hours of dress fittings, which involves trying to squeeze into a whole lot of tight glittery things. The Executive Producers behind the show want to see what all the options look like on camera with TV lighting, so we also have to spend some time shooting each look in our studio. It's all about making me look like a star (which I can't complain about), and deciding what look will be best for the overall aesthetic of the award show. This is so much more than just shopping for dresses!
And at this point, it's still not decided what I'll be wearing at the MMVAs. In the meantime, I have multiple radio and print interviews sprinkled throughout the days leading up to the event, so we can promote the MMVAs nationwide. If you haven't heard by now that the MMVAs are going down June 16th at 9E/6P, you must be living off the grid because we're talking to every media outlet in Canada!
If you walk by MuchMusic Headquarters in Toronto now, you can see the skeleton of the MMVAs stages coming together and there are crews working around the clock to get it all set up. Then, script meetings and cold reads start the week of the show, so I'll be sitting in a boardroom for 2-4 hours at a time going over every bit of the show.
About four days out from the night of the MMVAs, we get out on the actual stage and start blocking and rehearsing. You can also catch artists' sound checks at street level beginning on the Friday before the show and see hundreds of fans already camped out at the red carpet so they can get front row seats to see all the celebs arrive on Sunday.
It's a pretty spectacular thing to watch the event come together in such a quick amount of time. It just shows the strength of all the people who work in our building, who focus to seamlessly create an event that is unlike anything else around the world. Watch the 2013 MMVA Red Carpet Special on Sunday June 16th at 8E/5P followed by the 2013 MuchMusic Video Awards at 9E/6P on MuchMusic.