has surpassed another milestone — her Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show is officially the most watched halftime show in history.
According to a recent Nielsen report, Rihanna’s halftime show — her first live performance in almost five years — garnered nearly 121.017 million viewers on February 12. As part of the now history-making performance, she not only announced she was pregnant with her and A$AP Rocky’s second child, she also performed a medley of her biggest tracks.
about:blank
The report also noted that viewers weren’t just impacted by the singer’s performance, but also by the big game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles.
The Associated Press reported that Nielsen had revised its original 113.1 million figure by 2 million “after a review that revealed encoding irregularities as well as issues with out-of-home measurement.”
This new number surpasses the previous record set by the 2015 Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks, which attracted 114.442 million people (not including streaming).
In addition, this year’s average number of viewers surpassed the previous record set by the 2017 Super Bowl between the Atlanta Falcons and the New England Patriots (113.668 million). Roc Nation shared the exciting news via Twitter post on Tuesday (May 2).
In other related news, the singer has been cast in a brand new film role — and this time, she’ll be going blue as she takes on the role of Smurfette in Paramount’s The Smurfs Movie.
The announcement was made last month, while the “Pon De Replay” singer made a surprise in-person appearance at CinemaCon at the Caesar’s Palace Hotel in Las Vegas, NV.
“I tried to get the Papa Smurf role but it didn’t work out,” Rihanna joked about the part (via Variety).
In addition to voicing the lone female Smurf in the village, RiRi will be recording new songs for the soundtrack and producing the reboot of the franchise. The Smurfs Movie is set to hit theaters in 2025.
The franchise, which enjoyed a spate of success with hybrid live-action and animated films that first kicked off a decade ago, previously featured Katy Perry in the Smurfette role for the 2011 film The Smurfs, and Demi Lovato in the role for the 2017 film The Smurfs: The Lost Village.
