EXCLUSIVE: “The other night we had Michelle and Barack, last night we had Tim Walz, and tonight we got a major headliner,” declares Democratic National Convention executive producer Ricky Kirshner of Kamala Harris acceptance speech in a few hours. “So I say, the closing act is pretty good so stick around no matter what time it is,” the political and Hollywood veteran adds of the Vice President’s big night.
A multiple Emmy winner and nominee, Kirshner is an alum of Super Bowl halftime shows and the Tony Awards (which he is nominated for in the Outstanding Variety Special category at the next month’s 76th annual ceremony), and has been a part of every DNC since 1992 in NYC.
In an election year where almost everything is as unconventional as can be, the DNC in Chicago is actually a bit of back to the future. Unlike the virtual DNC that Kirshner and team had to scramble to put on back in 2020, the DNC 2024 is the first in-person gathering for Democratic delegates since Hillary Clinton was nominated in Philadelphia in 2016.
Still, among the speeches and testimonials, it hasn’t all been so traditional.
All week long, the atmosphere on the floor of the convention has been celebratory — a DJ even played the right-on-the-nose “Celebration” to dancing delegates on the final night. The music acts have been placed throughout the program — keeping delegates at peak energy.
As the final hours of this historic DNC loom, Kirshner chatted with us about the past three nights, tonight and how the Democrats got here. He wouldn’t talk about rumors of a Beyonce or another big surprise. which may just be a misinterpretation of some padding that has been baked into tonight’s running time to hit the ET primetime mark for the VPOTUS. However, Kirshner had a lot to say about getting it right on one of the biggest and most public stages of modern times.
DEADLINE: Spoilers are no fun, but I want to know how much of what we’re going to see tonight is a traditional balloon drop end of convention, and how much of what we are going to see are surprises for what’s clearly a historic moment of the first black woman to be nominated for president united states by a major American political party.
RICKY KIRSHNER: (LAUGHS) Are there any surprises? Don’t ask me that, then my answer has to be: if I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise.
DEADLINE: Well, Ricky, that’s the risk I’ll take.
KIRSHNER: Honestly, I think it’s going to be fairly traditional, balloon drop, and all. We might have a little sparkle here and there, but why mess with success, right?
Like, I think there is a strong tradition in that moment. You know, the time is for a focus on her and Doug, Governor Walz and his wife. And, that’s what the focus should be on. If people are looking around to see something besides our candidate, we haven’t done our jobs well.
DEADLINE: Ricky, it’s come to my attention, that today, as well as being the day that the Vice President makes her acceptance speech, this is also her 10th wedding anniversary. Are we going to see a cake?
KIRSHNER: (LAUGHS) That’s not that easy to pull off, believe it or not. Even if I sent someone out to buy a cake, it’s not that easy to get through security.
DEADLINE: Leading into the headliner tonight, what have been some of the surprises and challenges of this year’s convention that you didn’t expect?
KIRSHNER: There’s always surprises in this, you know that.
Many, many years ago, someone asked me, what do you think they’ll be the best moment? And I said, you never know in something like this. I think some of the speeches were great. I really loved the Doug speech the other night. I thought is was so warm and loving. Obviously, when you have people like Oprah, you know, that’s gonna score. I thought Gov. Walz last night was amazing.
DEADLINE: Organizers have gotten some flack for running late, past primetime. The VP’s campaign spokesman Michael Taylor told us earlier today that despite the media handwringing, they were fine with it because this is an event for more than just conventional TV, but multiple media platforms. And honestly, if former President Bill Clinton wants to go over his time, who is going to stop him – or shouldn’t expect that?
KIRSHNER: Well, thank you.
Look, you know what it is like from awards shows, Sometimes people go long, and you gotta make some concessions along the way, and we did. We do the best we can. Tonight, we’re going to go for better time.
On the on the other side of that, at the end of today you’ve got a headliner. The other night we had Michelle and Barack, last night we had Tim Walz, and tonight we got a major headliner. So I say, the closing act is pretty good so stick around no matter what time it is.
DEADLINE: There has to be a tightrope act at play here, keeping all the pieces and truly major players in place and on time. Is there a bridge too far in your opinion on pulling this off?
KIRSHNER: It’s funny, because even the acts that come in, there’s a lot of times we’ve said, “hey guys, it’s not the Grammys.” We can’t do a band set up. We have our own house band. We don’t have a closed band. We can’t hide so we’re not looking to do that.
DEADLINE: Was that a factor with the roll call, lots of acts there …
KIRSHNER: The roll call really built on what we did in 2020 during the pandemic.
As you know, then we went around the country virtually, and we kind of started with that idea again. And then Stephanie, the message person, I called her about a month or six weeks ago, and I said, “why are we trying to do we did last time?” I’m wanted this to be a party a real party. Everyone hasn’t seen each other in eight years, since the 2016 convention in Philly.
So, we started doing that. Then we’re like, let’s make it musical. And I think we got some messages in there actually along the way, if you paid attention.
DEADLINE: Where did the inspiration come from to really rock it out?
KIRSHNER: I went to a Chicago Bulls basketball game a month or so ago, and I was sitting there and thought “this is what it’s got to be like.”
DEADLINE: The king of Super Bowl halftime shows was inspired by the NBA?
KIRSHNER: Ha! Yes, the graphics flying on the ribbons and the graphics on the music. And then I called DJ Cassidy, I had worked with him in the past, and then it all just kind of came together. And I did not expect it to go there. The funny part was unexpected, like how into it Lil Jon was.
DEADLINE: Were you surprised by that?
KIRSHNER: Well, there were other celebs we tried to explain it to him, and they didn’t understand what we wanted to do. Then, on the day, when you see Sean Astin show up, and people start chanting “Rudy, Rudy, Rudy,” I was like people are getting it, they’re really getting it.
Then, I worried can it last for an hour? I don’t know, and it did. As you say Dominic, I’ve done a lot of big shows. But what people don’t understand is, on something like the roll call, we have 57 different delegations, all the music, and all the graphics. Then we had three live remotes. We went to Oakland at one point, went to Minnesota at one point. Then, as someone pointed out on Twitter the other day, which was really nice, we hit the Milwaukee remote exactly on time with the Vice President, perfectly cued up with the right music. I just got to say: my crew did an amazing job.
DEADLINE: To that, what tech do you have in your toolbox that you didn’t have at the last live DNC in 2016?
KIRSHNER: Well, because of all the Zooming of 2020, a lot of remote we’re able to get in a lot easier now.
DEADLINE: Oh, really?
KIRSHNER: Oh yeah. I remember at 2016 or even 2012, you’d have to send a remote truck and an uplink and other stuff like that. Now it’s pretty easy to plug and play on the internet. You know, you get a pretty good feed that we could put up on television or on our screen. So that’s certainly evolved tremendously.
You know, I think our LED screens, which you know, not to get too technical, were probably five to eight million eight years ago, are two million now. It looks like a beautiful movie screen behind you. You know, things like that have really evolved.
But, you know, I think a lot of it is just production guys that know what we’re doing and figure this out along the way.
DEADLINE: The non-tech aspect of it.
KIRSHNER: Yeah, we are comfortable with each other and do a lot of big shows together all through the years. So, like, I honestly didn’t really even consider how hard the roll call was until it was over. Once we did that, I’m like, oh, shoot, yeah, that’s kind of what we do. We didn’t even think like that. That’s crazy. But that’s our business.
DEADLINE: In that, with presidents, ex-presidents, vice presidents, almost presidents, there’s a lot of heavyweights to keep happy, even by Hollywood standards, and keeping the eye on the prize with the nominee. So, the question is, especially when you are introducing a candidate to the American people, is the convention for the people in the arena or is the convention for the people watching on TV for you? Is it a balance?
KIRSHNER: It’s absolutely a balance.
The interesting thing about this one though is, obviously the roll call thing was to energize the room, right? And especially since we haven’t been together in eight years, the room’s pretty energized on every speech. And you know, when we play, we win, the chants start going organically sometimes.
But what’s interesting, and I think a lot of people don’t realize, is we do have a TV feed, DNC TV, but if you’re watching CNN, or you’re watching MSNBC, or you’re watching a network, they have their own cameras. So, it’s a very complex thing when you talk to the news organizations every morning and go through our program. To answer your question, we’re very concerned with what’s in the room, but we’re also very concerned with how the networks cover us. Understanding that you might not see our cameras. you might see someone else’s cameras, It’s a very, very complex web of trying to work with the networks to get our message out on our behalf, even though they’re news organizations, to have to cover us in their way.
DEADLINE: This might sound too nerdy, but how big a production is the DNC for you?
KIRSHNER: Oh, it’s pretty large.
We have probably 250 people or more on production staff. That’s not including local union labor stagehands, another 100 or so.
What people don’t understand is, even in Super Bowl like this, our production team is one part of a major, major operation. There’s a bussing operation that’s moving 5000 delegates. There’s security. I mean, just to go out and feed people is a full operation. Just to get a credential system up and running is a full system. Then there are all the political people. So, we are a small piece within a very, very large, complex system. We also appreciate that they understand that at the end of the day, what people see at home is what we put out there when we built. Bruce Rogers designed our set, Bobby Dickinson lights it, etc. We’ve worked for five months just to make it look that good.
In the Super Bowl, with the halftime, you’re a small part of a football game. Here, you’re a small part of a gigantic, gigantic system, one element of this, and as always, there’s a push and pull.
DEADLINE: Speaking of push and pull, just over a month ago, this was Joe Biden’s DNC. Now it is squarely Kamala Harris’ convention. What that a big shift for you and your team?
KIRSHNER: I mean…(LAUGHS)
Seriously like I said, we started looking at set designs, etc, months ago. You know, this thing doesn’t get built in the day. So, a lot of that was already own the road.
Were there some videos and stuff that had to be redone?
Yeah, that’s part of the messaging. I’ve worked with Stephanie Cutter of Precision, and Minyon Moore, who’s the chair working with all the messaging stuff. A lot of the messaging stuff comes from them, and I think we have a good partnership.
DEADLINE: On a practical level, how does that work?
KIRSHNER: You know, they might have a message and say, “Hey, how do we stage this?” Let me give you an example. I don’t know if you saw the other night, there were a couple of moments where we have like, three, four or five people out there talking about Reproductive Rights. We didn’t want them to just come to the lecture, we wanted to let them tell their stories,
So, we said to the messaging team: Let us help you stage it.
It was like, how do we stage this in a beautiful way? Now, we can’t go to black like a theater.
So, we bring then up one by one in the spotlight. In the end, a lot of the message, what the words were, came from the message people, but what the look was, came from us. And so to go back to your question, yes, we built a set, we had a light, but what did the backdrops look like? What did our graphics look like? What are those pictures of the backdrop look like? All of that evolved in the last month as the candidate situation evolved.
Which brings us to the big night tonight, which I think you’ll enjoy.
