Thalía and Tommy Mottola will be in Daily Mail’s Answers to Correspondents on June 4, 2015 at 6pm – 8:30pm at Riverpark (450 East 29th Street New York City)
Answers to Correspondents is Daily Mail ‘s exclusive event series on all things notable and noteworthy. Join CEO on June 4th at 6 pm for a special event with Thalía & Tommy Mottola as they discuss music, fashion and business in this intimate setting.
Thalía, Mexico’s most famous ‘queen of the telenovela’ star has sold over 45 million albums worldwide. She is also an author, nationally syndicated radio show host, social media influencer, and an astute business woman. Thalía can now add fashion mogul to the list, with her incredibly successful Thalía Sodi Collection, which is the first selling brand at Macy’s. Thalía is also a national spokesperson for the .
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Tommy Mottola , Former Chairman and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment is one of the highest-profile executives in the history of the music industry. He currently heads the Mottola Media Group, a global media and entertainment company and is credited with discovering and guiding the careers of many of the world’s most iconic artists such as Hall and Oates, Carly Simon, John Mellencamp, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Beyonce, and Billy Joel. He is widely known for forging a new brand of global superstar by creating what TIME Magazine called the Latin Explosion with the crossover success of such household names as Gloria Estefan, Shakira, Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony. Currently, he is producing for the Broadway Stage in alliance with the award winning production team, The Dodgers. He is also a NY Times best-selling author having released his memoir, HITMAKER, the Man and his Music.
UPDATE JUNE 5, 2015
Thalía and Tommy Mottola discuss their 16-year marriage in rare joint interview. What do you get when a Latina superstar weds a passionate Italian-American? Chaos!
- The couple were interviewed by Daily Mail CEO Jon Steinberg at an Answers to Correspondents event last night in New York
- Thalía and Tommy married in 2000 and have two children, seven-year-old daughter Sabrina and four-year-old son Matteo
Latin pop superstar Thalía has revealed the secrets of her enduring showbusiness marriage to influential music executive Tommy Mottola, passion, close collaboration and opposite taste in TV shows. Speaking to Daily Mail CEO Jon Steinberg, the 43-year-old Mexican singer, fashion designer, actress and social media phenomenon said of her Italian-American husband ‘We share a lot of similarities. We’re passionate. The music, the food, everything is around the table. We cook, we sing.’
Mottola, 65, who was being interviewed alongside Thalía at an Answers to Correspondents event hosted by Daily Mail at the Riverpark restaurant in Manhattan Thursday night, said ‘Everything is on ten in our house! When I’m on a business call and the pager comes on, it’s all in Spanish so everybody goes, ‘Are you in an airport?’ We collaborate on many different things whether it’s music or videos.’ Thalía added ‘Or making children!’
The couple married in 2000 and have two children, seven-year-old daughter Sabrina and four-year-old son Matteo.
Mottola, the former head of Sony Music Entertainment who discovered and guided the careers of Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen and Shakira among others, said ‘What I love about it [marriage] is we end up, I would say 90 per cent of the time, with the same point of view, even though it may seem in the middle of it that you completely disagree. That’s basically because of a misunderstanding of cultures or words. I want to get everything done in two seconds and Thalía wants a big explanation. Collabaratively it’s easy, it’s shorthand. The same tastes.’
I want to get everything done in two seconds and Thalía wants a big explanation. Collabaratively it’s easy, it’s shorthand. The same tastes.
Yet when Thalía was asked by Steinberg what TV sitcom she hypothetically wished to star in, she replied ‘The Nanny. I love The Nanny’, referencing the 1990s sitcom starring Fran Drescher. Mottola responded ‘Are you serious? I hate The Nanny’! Thalía said ‘See! This is our dynamic. This is why we’re together 16 years!’
Mottola, who now heads entertainment company the Mottola Media Group, said neither he nor Thalía take their work home with them ‘We don’t listen to her music and we don’t listen to any music I ever made.’ Instead they listen to Mumford & Sons, Bruno Mars, The Doors and Andrea Bocelli.
Thalía has sold close to 50 million records worldwide. Her 2013 Latin pop-bachata song Te Perdiste Mi Amor, which also featured American singer Prince Royce, proved her biggest hit to date selling almost 1 million copies. She said ‘I sing in all kind of styles but bachata is very sensual and very sexy.’
Last February, Thalía debuted a fashion line for Macy’s, available at 300 stores across the US.
She said ‘The collection understands the Latin woman. We know the trends, the textures, the colors and the fit which is the most important. We come in very different shapes and we give that through the collection. But a certain portion of it is general market, for everyone.’
Thalía is a social media powerhouse, boasting 15 million followers on Facebook, 7.5 million followers on Twitter and nearly 2 million followers on Instagram.
She revealed her favorite medium of communication is still Facebook which she recently used to stream a live fashion show. She said ‘Sometimes I just go straight to Facebook. Facebook has people maybe from my generation, maybe mothers my age, maybe they’re daughters. Instagram is very young and Twitter is in between.’
The collection understands the Latin woman. We know the trends, the textures, the colors and the fit which is the most important.
However, even though Thalía is also popular on Snapchat, she said she ‘does not engage’ with the video messaging app ‘You have to teach me how to use it!’
Mottola now views social media as a more influential medium than TV. He said ‘I think they’re both critically important but social is more important. The power of that little screen still to market, promote and advertise is unbeatable.’
Mottola’s signings as a music executive include Jennifer Lopez, Gloria Estefan and Ricky Martin and his passion for Latin American music is reflected in a new HBO documentary he is producing entitled The Latin Explosion.
As well as interviewing music stars that he developed, Mottola features the actresses Eva Longoria and Sofía Vergara in the documentary which will premiere next year.
Mottola revealed the inspiration for The Latin Explosion came with President Obama’s 2008 election victory. He said ‘The Latin vote helped swing this election to a large degree. I’m looking at my children and this whole thing flashed in front of my eyes with them and us and watching this guy win. It was really like an out-of-body experience for me and it motivated me to want to do this film.’
But Mottola revealed his fears for the future of the music industry. He said ‘Commerce is getting paid for your art. I think getting screwed for your art is robbery. How would you like to have Jeff Koons give you a dog and say, ‘OK, thanks. I’m not paying you $20 million?’ It started with Napster. Of course everyone in the industry, including myself, didn’t embrace it. We tried to kill it and take it down which we did successfully, but foolishly in my opinion. Had we embraced it, it would have been ours, we would have owned it and it would have been our business to control.’
He added ‘The only revenue left for artists now are the ancillaries. You use the music as a platform to market, promote and advertise yourself and if you don’t have the endorsement deals or touring or any other deals that come in to make money, you just don’t make money.’
Yet Thalía continues to thrive with the recent release of her 17th album Amore Mio and a role voicing the villain Scarlet Overkill in the Spanish language version of Despicable Me spin-off movie Minions which she described as ‘my gift to my children’.
She said ‘I’m very ADD or hyper so I’m always creating or writing or acting’.
Thalía and Tommy Mottola was seen at The Polo Bar restaurant in New York City on June 4, 2015 after they attendend . See more HQ photos !