Zelensky, and his team, bought Wallace’s pitch. Wallace credits them with understanding the power of pop culture. Zelensky, of course, is a former comedian and actor, and his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, is a former film producer. The Grammys were a big one, and he spoke at the Cannes Film Festival as well. Ukraine’s president has made sporadic appearances at certain cultural events to try and rally support. There was one last piece of the puzzle, however: convincing Zelensky to participate. Ultimately, the idea for an original song was scratched (the eight-week window to pull the special together ended up being too short a timeframe), but the special lives on. “He said, ‘Well, why don’t we give you an hour of airtime and you can do an hour of musical performances leading up to the song?'” she says. She explained the concept to him, and he immediately bought in. “And he kind of laughed we were still getting our food at the buffet.” “I said, ‘Whatever you think this lunch is about, it’s about something else,'” Wallace says. Luckily for her, she had a pre-existing lunch on her schedule with NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell, at the company’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza headquarters. With the industry increasingly on board, Wallace needed to figure out just where the special would run. Not everyone could do it in eight weeks, but everyone wanted to help.” “I figured out in the first day, that no one said no. “I relied on everyone who I could convince that this was a worthwhile idea to bring me to the next person,” Wallace says. Paisley was in, and introduced her to Grammys writer David Wild, who in turn introduced her to others in the music community. I know Brad Paisley, and I called him around 9 in the morning, and I said if I wanted to try and do ‘We Are the World,’ would you help me?” she recalls. It was, to hear her say it, somewhat far-fetched, and certainly out of her comfort zone, but Wallace said she had one lead that could help her pull the project together. “After President Zelensky addressed the Grammy Awards, I started ruminating on ‘We Are the World,'” Wallace tells The Hollywood Reporter, recalling that she turned to her husband in the car and said, “Do you think I could do a ‘We Are the World’ for Ukraine?” Wallace was at the aforementioned drive-through earlier this spring with her 10-year-old son, her husband ( New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt they had only been married for a few weeks), and their two dogs, when everything clicked into place. A few weeks later, Zelensky appeared on the Grammy Awards where he asked for support from the music community. Wallace had been covering the invasion on her show every day, and she had developed sources in the country, including Igor Novikov, a former aide to Zelensky, who had at one point floated the idea of a “We Are the World”-type song for Ukraine (“We Are the World” being the famous 1985 single that raised money for victims of famine in Africa). 'Awards Chatter' Podcast - Alicia Vikander ('Firebrand' and 'Irma Vep')
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