BET’s Debra Lee Explains How She Kept Beyoncé’s Epic Performance a Secret – blogged by @MsJennyb

The 2016 BET Awards Show was one of the best yet, topped by the extraordinary tribute to the pop icon, Prince. However, the network completely outdid themselves when they surprised the audience, as well as viewers at home, with a special opening performance that left everyone bald, if you know what I mean. (Edges snatched!)

Beyoncé came through and tore up the stage with Kendrick Lamar, performing “Freedom” from her new album, Lemonade.

As we all know by now, Beyoncé is the queen of secrets, among other things; therefore, there was a great deal of difficulty in trying to keep her presence under wraps.

It had been about four years since the Queen Bey had last attended a BET awards show. In 2014, the network aired a pre-recorded performance of “Partition” featuring Jay Z displayed on a jumbotron, which was not exactly what fans were expecting.

However, this year the network delivered and BET’s CEO Debra L. Lee detailed the efforts it took to keep the entire thing a secret.

“She committed several weeks ago,” Debra Lee told Billboard. “We had four tons of water that we had to get on the stage and then clean up after her performance. We were worried about electricity and other things that could go wrong. But we wanted her to have the performance she wanted. She hadn’t been to the awards in a few years. After hearing her new music, I thought it was important for her to be there. She has a show in England tomorrow night, so it was great of her to agree to stay because it wasn’t the perfect timing. I saw the rehearsal the night before the show and that’s when I first learned that Kendrick Lamar was part of it. She does the water dance in her concert but with all women. But Beyoncé thought it was important to have men and women of color come together. She wanted this to be a performance she’d never done before. She wanted it to be epic, and it was.”

“We threatened people within an inch of their lives to keep the secret,” she said. “Beyoncé wants to do it her way; I respect her for that. And she didn’t want people to know she was going to be on the show. So we told very few people on the team. I was a nervous wreck until the day of the show because I was like, ‘If this leaks out, this may not happen.'”

“Beyoncé would rehearse late at night for hours,” she added. “She and the dancers would get wet, look at the tape and then get wet again. The night I went, all the dancers were onstage in bathrobes waiting to rehearse again. At one point, they started heating the water to make Beyoncé and the dancers more comfortable.”