Jennifer Lopez

Daniel: Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us here today. Thank you. Your new movie, Second Act, takes on some pretty meaty workplace topics. Yeah. The idea of your career being, feeling stuck, or barriers either real or internal that are stopping people from getting to where they wanna get.

You have a million projects going on. There's so many different things you can do. Why is this a story that you wanted to tell?

Jennifer Lopez: I just feel like it's every person. And somebody's like, "Oh, it's the every girl or the every woman," but it's every person. Mm-hmm. There's a time in all of our lives where we want to get ahead, where we have an ambition, where we wanna do more, where we wanna succeed further.

And sometimes we hit a wall, and we don't know how to get past it. And we realize at the end of it, you know, hopefully you get to the point where you realize the only thing that's stopping you is you and you can break through any barrier. But sometimes that's a long road.

That's a hard journey. Have you had that experience? I mean, for me, there's been so many times, 'cause, you know, this business is pretty unforgiving- Mm-hmm.

When it comes to being rejected. You get rejected a lot. I say for the, you know, the 40-something movies I've done, you know, I've gotten 100 no's in between.

And that's, that's just the nature of what we do. Maybe 400, you know, no's at this point. But it's, it's definitely a feeling that I'm familiar with.

Yeah. Daniel: One of the interesting parts about the character is that she doesn't have a college degree. She feels left Right. Because she doesn't have a college degree.

I'm curious, when you hire people, do you look for degrees? Do you think it's important? Jennifer Lopez: It's a yes and no question, right?

It's great if somebody has an amazing education, but I know from my own experience and my own life and and other people that I work with that you don't have to have a degree to have value or to, you know, be of tremendous worth to different businesses. That street smarts, that experience, that just kind of internal kind of creative know-how, is just as valuable as a degree.

Yeah. And I think that's what this movie deals with a lot, which is, which is a great thing, because most people don't have the privilege of getting that type of education. I know I didn't. Nobody I knew growing up did.

And I. And still a lot of us have been successful. Daniel: So do you make it a point when you're, you have so many people working for you or working with Right.

You can make choices about who's on the set with you. Are you looking for degrees? Do you actively go out and look for people who don't have degrees?

Jennifer Lopez: I never did, I have to tell you. Yeah. I never did. I always went more with vibe and energy.

Mm-hmm. And to tell you the truth, it's really about I'm looking for a hard worker, a hard worker who's not afraid to work, like, 24 hours a day. Yeah. If that sounds crazy, it's 'cause we are. Basically, anytime. I am, and everybody who works for me as well.

And then recently, as I've gotten more into kind of owning businesses and going from a licensing model to an, a, an ownership model, I realize I need people who have more business experience. And so yeah, I've been looking more at that lately. Daniel: Could you talk a little bit about that, moving from licensing- Sure.

To ownership? What made you make that change, and what are you looking for? Jennifer Lopez: You know, I've been of the mind a long time that the way it's done in Hollywood and the way artists are, you know, kind of handled and taken care of, that there was something Hmm. With the fact that we bring.