Ny­erere Haynes

Wendy Lewis is no stranger to the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try. Her de­ci­sion to host her own talk show Down to Earth with Wen'D which airs on CNC3 was an in­evitable step in her ca­reer. Wendy's ca­reer in artiste man­age­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go spans 22 years, hav­ing worked with a num­ber of ac­com­plished en­ter­tain­ers, among them Gen­er­al Grant and In­na Vi­sionz so­ca band which in­clud­ed lead vo­cal­ist Ker­win Du Bois and Ter­ri Lyons in 2008. She now man­ages Heav­en "Snakey" Charles- an artiste she at­tests is one of the most un­der­rat­ed en­ter­tain­ers of this time.

Lewis was in­tro­duced to en­ter­tain­ment back in the ear­ly 90's via Keskidee Kar­a­van led by Robert Amar whilst she man­aged vet­er­an, Cur­tis "Gen­er­al" Grant.

By the mid 90's she re­turned to the Unit­ed King­dom as Gen­er­al Grant's Eu­ro­pean Man­ag­er. Dur­ing her time in the UK, she man­aged So­ca band Touch­down Mas­sive head­ed by Ju­nior Eng­lish and then her own band, In­na Vi­sionz. Dur­ing this time she had the plea­sure of work­ing with Su­perblue, Ron­nie Mc In­tosh, Denise Bel­fon, Ker­win Du Bois and Kny­cky Cord­ner, just to name a few.

In 2000, bul­lied by the late Skunky and cousins Nigel & Mar­vin Lewis, she en­tered the Lon­don Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion where she placed fourth (not a bad feat for a first timer). Dri­ven by her com­pet­i­tive spir­it and groomed by vo­cal pow­er­house Miss El­la An­dall (and with lyrics penned by Or­t­neil Bac­chus alias 'To­ba­go Cru­soe') she de­cid­ed fourth was not good enough. Armed with poise, grace, enun­ci­a­tion and a pow­er­ful de­liv­ery, she be­came the first woman to win the com­pe­ti­tion in 17 years, de­thron­ing Ker­win Du Bois with her ren­di­tion of Im­mi­grants' Dilem­ma. Af­ter three wins, she de­cid­ed she had noth­ing else to prove and bowed out of UK com­pe­ti­tions.

Af­ter achiev­ing her aca­d­e­m­ic goals, she re­turned to Trinidad in De­cem­ber 2008. By 2009, she be­came the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Trinidad and To­ba­go En­ter­tain­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed. By 2010, she de­cid­ed that what she was do­ing for oth­ers she could do for her­self – and to the stan­dard which she had grown ac­cus­tomed – and so Kha­l­abash En­ter­tain­ment & Pro­mo­tions was born. She has suc­cess­ful­ly pro­mot­ed the Car­ni­val Maxi which took artists to var­i­ous venues across the coun­try; she was the Ex­ec­u­tive Pro­duc­er for the Spice & Pan project which fea­tured Grena­di­an kaison­ian Tall­pree and Trinidad's very own Heav­en "Snakey" Charles.

Ac­cord­ing to Lewis, Down to earth with Wen'D has been two years in the mak­ing and pre­miered at a me­dia launch ear­li­er this month at the Carl­ton Sa­van­nah."The launch was a suc­cess; the view­ers re­al­ly en­joyed it and the feed­back I got was pos­i­tive," said Lewis.

Down to Earth with Wen'D (which airs on Sat­ur­days at 8pm with a re­peats on Tues­days at 5pm), was birthed from the need for more lo­cal en­ter­tain­ment pro­gram­ming with an in­ter­na­tion­al qual­i­ty. The se­ries moves away from the tra­di­tion­al in-house talk show and ven­tures to lo­ca­tions that em­body the essence of the in­ter­vie­wee. The talk show boasts some­thing for every­one, and show­cas­es the ac­com­plish­ments and is­sues of peo­ple from dif­fer­ent walks of life.

Said Lewis, "It's not just a cul­tur­al show. While we will fo­cus on singers and oth­er artists, I in­tend to in­ter­view any­one as long as they have an in­ter­est­ing and in­spi­ra­tional sto­ry that will be of use to view­ers,"The se­ries con­sists of 13 episodes per sea­son and the film and pro­duc­tion as­pect of the show is an on­go­ing process. Be­hind the scenes are di­rec­tor, An­to­nio Blanche, Ahmed Muham­mad of 2Tone Pro­duc­tion along with their film crew.

"Shoot­ing on lo­ca­tion has been fan­tas­tic! 2Tone is not just a film crew, they are a vi­tal part of the pro­duc­tion team and they know their job in­side and out. Our pro­duc­tion As­sis­tant Laraine Samuel is very hands on and once you have a team of peo­ple on the same page it makes every­thing much eas­i­er," ad­mit­ted Lewis.

Anne Moore Spencer

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