SUZANNE SHEP­PARD

Just two weeks in­to his new gig, the new host of The Morn­ing Brew, Ja­son “JW” Williams has brought a lot of ex­cite­ment to the show.

His de­but on Sep­tem­ber 6 got im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), with the op­po­si­tion par­ty ques­tion­ing his abil­i­ty to be ob­jec­tive as he had been a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date in the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion. With­in days there was an an­nounce­ment from the UNC that none of their rep­re­sen­ta­tives would ap­pear on the show.

Amid all that con­tro­ver­sy, JW chose to fo­cus on the task at hand.

“I just fo­cused on my task, fo­cused on the in­ter­views and kept that in the back­ground, and come up bright and sprite­ly,” he said.

Then came week two which “snow­balled in­to this whole Nic­ki Mi­naj ex­cite­ment.” JW gave his take on the is­sue in a mono­logue which quick­ly went vi­ral on Twit­ter, with pos­i­tive re­spons­es pour­ing in from the Unit­ed States and even fur­ther afield.

He said he was prompt­ed to share his views on Mi­naj’s COVID vac­cine claims be­cause of the at­ten­tion it was bring­ing to this coun­try.

“I mean she is ex­treme­ly tal­ent­ed, born in Trinidad and To­ba­go. For bet­ter or for worse, she still put us on the map. I thought it was my right to de­fend it and show that we are no laugh­ing stock,” he ex­plained.

“Don’t bring that kind of pap­py show to T&T. I just talk about us in a good light and I put us up on the moun­tain top.”

The buzz has on­ly in­creased around JW and The Morn­ing Brew since then. Apart from his video clip be­ing shared wide­ly across so­cial me­dia, it has al­so brought him some un­ex­pect­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing a guest ap­pear­ance on The Dai­ly Show host­ed by co­me­di­an Trevor Noah.

The con­nec­tion was made af­ter Noah sent out a re­quest through a What­sApp group in LA to get in touch with JW. One of the mem­bers of the group, Dar­ius Mar­cellin, put the pro­duc­ers of The Dai­ly Show in touch with JW.

Once con­tact was made, JW was sent a script and asked to add his Tri­ni flavour to an ad for erec­tile dys­func­tion—or a flat tyre as it is re­ferred to in the skit.

Even af­ter he sub­mit­ted the voice note, JW ad­mit­ted: “On­ly when I look at the show and ac­tu­al­ly saw it, I was like ‘Wow.’ I still had some kind of doubt. It’s not that I am not op­ti­mistic. I felt hap­py most­ly for the show, that the show was fea­tured. What we do here could res­onate and cre­ate waves across the world.”

The new host of the Morning Brew Jason Williams.

Nicole Drayton

As the new host of The Morn­ing Brew, JW said he is fo­cused on adding his dis­tinc­tive style to the pop­u­lar morn­ing show. Pre­vi­ous hosts in­clud­ed Hema Ramkissoon and Na­tal­ie Legore and there were re­cent brief stints by Jessie-May Ven­tour and Soyi­ni Grey.

“I love the new set. I love the fact that we have the Zoom wall. We util­is­ing tech­nol­o­gy and cre­at­ing a whole dif­fer­ent en­er­gy and feel in the morn­ing,” he said.

Al­though most of his work­ing life is spent in the lime­light, in his per­son­al life JW is very dif­fer­ent. He de­scribes him­self as very laid back and qui­et.

“I tend to re­treat. I am an out­door, laid back kind of guy. I like my sports too, but gen­er­al­ly very qui­et. Peo­ple feel I am this ac­tive, kicks man,” he said.

JW joins The Morn­ing Brew with a track record of more than 20 years as a me­dia pro­fes­sion­al. He de­scribes his new job as “me com­ing back to what was my orig­i­nal in­tro­duc­tion in­to me­dia which is tele­vi­sion.”

He point­ed out: “I ac­tu­al­ly start­ed my ca­reer at 17 host­ing Par­ty Time on TTT in 1997. I start­ed ra­dio in Ju­ly 1998.”

From there he went on to host live events such as School So­ca Monarch, in ad­di­tion to stints on the par­ty and club cir­cuit, al­though he said his pref­er­ence was cul­tur­al events.

He was ap­proached by pro­duc­er Lisa Wick­ham to be a co-host of the tele­vi­sion pro­gramme se­ries E-Zone, free­lanced as a pre­sen­ter for Syn­er­gy TV and host­ed his prime­time pro­gramme, Syn­er­gy Nights.

Lat­er he ex­plored his mu­si­cal op­tions, do­ing his record­ing in 2001, a song called No Re­sponse.

“It was more for fun back then,” he said.

Lat­er on, JW joined forces with An­cil “Blaze” Isaac Jr and they start­ed record­ing to­geth­er in 2007.

Their mu­si­cal col­lab­o­ra­tions in­clud­ed Eat Ah Food,

Bam­si­ol­o­gy and Work and, at the in­sis­tence of Blaze, start­ed en­ter­ing com­pe­ti­tions. “He had a more busi­nesslike ap­proach and de­cid­ed we should en­ter So­ca Monarch which was some­thing I had nev­er done,” he re­called. “We en­tered that first time, ac­tu­al­ly made it to the fi­nals but we came last, we came dead, dead last.”

The duo’s big taste of suc­cess came in 2010 with their so­ca hit Palance which brought them the So­ca Monarch and Road March ti­tles.

JW al­so made a brief for­ay in­to pol­i­tics, first as a PNM sen­a­tor and then as the par­ty’s San Juan/Barataria can­di­date in the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion. He lost to UNC can­di­date Sad­dam Ho­sein.

How JW is back on fa­mil­iar me­dia ground, al­beit in a new role. Look­ing ahead, he said: “I look at my ca­reer as every day I turn a page and ever so of­ten chap­ters come up and I turn the chap­ter. I think me com­ing on The Morn­ing Brew is the turn­ing of a chap­ter and I think and I am ea­ger to see where this jour­ney takes me and The Morn­ing Brew and the com­pa­ny as a whole.

“I think it’s go­ing to be a good, good ride.”