“We’re celebrating, not dwelling,” Bruce Gillmer says about his company’s approach to the 40th anniversary of the MTV Video Music Awards, set for tonight at UBS Arena in Elmont, New York.

Gillmer, Paramount's president of Music, Music Talent, Programming & Events and Paramount+'s chief content officer, Music, has been around long enough to know that MTV, in its various iterations, hasn’t always embraced its history. “I lived through that era of, ‘We have to live in the here and now. We don't want to look to the past. It makes us look old and irrelevant.’ This VMAs is definitely not living in the past, but we're not necessarily afraid of the past, either,” he says. “I feel like we've pulled out all the stops, with arguably our best lineup ever.”

That lineup includes show opener Eminem, Video Vanguard Award recipient Katy Perry, host and performer Megan Thee Stallion, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Benson Boone, Anitta, GloRilla, Camila Cabello and KAROL G. Taylor Swift, who is expected to attend, leads all artists with 12 nominations. The 2024 VMAs will air live at 8 p.m. ET across MTV’s global footprint, including BET, CMT, VH1, Paramount Network and Univision.

Gillmer took time out from plumping Taylor’s foot pillow to give HITS the inside scoop.

Given the ever-changing broadcast landscape, it’s amazing that the VMAs are turning 40. How will you acknowledge the anniversary on the show?

First, the VMAs turning 40 is a real testament to the MTV brand, and the staying power and relevance of the VMAs.

Specifically, to celebrate the 40th, we're putting together five flashback moments where we're going to look at highlights of the most iconic moments from VMAs past, and then we're going to land on one. So, if you can imagine, we're going to flash through 8 or 10 moments quickly, and then we're going to land on, say, Madonna and the wedding dress from 1984, or Britney Spears with the snake doing “I’m a Slave 4 U” from 2001. We’ll be rolling those out throughout the show.

In addition to that, we've got what we call the extended play stage, and on the extended play stage, we booked two of the hottest emerging artists, Teddy Swims and Jessie Murph, who will each do three separate short performances. For the third performance, they’ll cover a portion of an iconic VMA performance.

You’re calling from rehearsal at UBS. How do you like the venue?

This room blows me away every time I walk into it. UBS is just over two years old and it’s absolutely state-of-the-art. Really solid acoustics, amazing technical capability. Everything that you want when you're doing a multi-act show. This is the heaviest VMAs ever.

Heaviest how?

Somebody came up to me and said, "Hey, it's the heaviest show ever." I'm like, "Well, I know it's the heaviest show ever with talent.” He's like, "No, no, it's our rigging. We're at almost 400,000 pounds." We've got four stages that are fully capable of high levels of production—really five, if you include the presentation stage—and a couple of satellite stages. We also have a new addition to the production, something we call our fandom stage, which is a stage that we literally built right into the stands in the audience.

The lineup is a nice mix of talent.

We've got Megan Thee Stallion hosting and performing. We've got some of the biggest Latin acts: KAROL G, Rauw Alejandro, Anitta. We have Camila Cabello coming back for the first time in a long time, Shawn Mendes making his return. And then we have some of the hottest new talent of the year: Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Benson Boone.

Will Travis Kelce be performing?

[laughs] We don't have Travis, but we do have Lenny Kravitz, who hasn't been on the show for years and years, and he'll be doing a re-imagined “Fly Away,” which is now called “Fly,” with Quavo. We have an amazing moment with LL Cool J, who's going to perform one of his new tracks, but he's also going to help celebrate Def Jam’s 40th anniversary. And then, just announced, to open the show, we have Eminem.

When was your first VMAs, and what do you remember most about it?

I think my first show was 1988. I was either an intern or a coordinator on the music team. Here’s what I remember from that first era of shows. I remember getting yelled at by Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch in 1989 because they weren't happy with where Def Leppard was in the lineup, even though I'm sure I had nothing to do with sequencing the show back then. That year, Axl Rose came on stage and performed “Free Fallin’” with Tom Petty. That was incredible. 1992 at the Pauley Pavilion was crazy. I remember Axl having a moment with Courtney Love on the way back to the trailers. I remember Howard Stern coming down as Fartman. Maybe not the most musical moment, but hilarious. Nirvana's Krist Novoselic threw his bass up in the air and it landed on his head. Elton John and Guns N’ Roses did “November Rain.” How much time do you have? [laughs]

Give me the 30,000-foot view of where award shows are right now. Are they in a good place?

Yes, but maybe not for all of them. With the primary drivers in the award show landscape, and I'll definitely put the VMAs in that category with the Grammys, the BET Awards, the AMAs, you do see an uptick. But there may be one or two too many award shows. The core award shows are doing well, and they're growing, but there's not room for everybody.

Last question. I know you can't say if Taylor is definitely coming to the show, but, assuming she is, what's the proper over/under on the number of cutaway shots of Taylor in the audience?

Oh, man, you're bad. So I'll start off by saying Taylor obviously has a strong connection to the VMAs, and we're blessed to be able to say that she attends whenever she can. We feel good that there's a high likelihood that we'll see her.

The over/under for how many cutaways we'll do? Listen, we have to be merciful. We have to be respectful. I know there's a temptation to just shoot Taylor the whole night and ignore whatever else is going on. It's hard to avoid. I'm just going to be very conservative. You're going to laugh at me… five times.

I'm taking the over, Bruce. You could've said 50, and I would have taken the over.

I knew you would. [laughs]