Earlier this week, a Prince fans created a petition against Madonna being the only one to pay homage to to the late musician during the 2016 Billboard Awards this Sunday (May 22). The executive producer of the awards ceremony, Mark Bracco, is defending the decision to have Madonna pay tribute to Prince.
“Listen, I think everybody is entitled to their opinion and everyone can have their own opinion, but I will say that we are honored and could not be more excited for Madonna to be on the show and to pay tribute to someone that was her friend and her peer and her colleague,” Bracco told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “I think it’s going to be fantastic.”
He continued, “It’s going to be very, very intimate and very respectful, and I think it’s something that is really going to pay tribute to Prince as the incredible, groundbreaking artist that he was and the influence that he had on music,” he said.
Bracco said Madonna’s team called just as they were brainstorming how they would go about honoring Prince. “Honestly her team gave a call and inquired about what we might be thinking about and it led to many conversations about what would she want to do and how would we want to shape it creatively,” he said. “And after everyone (got) comfortable with exactly what the direction was, we all collectively wanted to go into Madonna, that she would do this and she has been very, very involved in how this will all unfold creatively.”
A few Prince fans said they weren’t even going to watch, but if you do, we’ll just have to see what Madonna has in store! The 2016 Billboard Awards will air live at 8 p.m. ET on ABC from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
