When news broke Tuesday that Reginald Hudlin and David Hill would produce the 88th Oscars, Hudlin was on a studio set, directing an episode of NBC's upcoming medical drama "Heartbreaker."
"My phone's blowing up with emails and texts and I was trying to shoot this liver transplant scene," Hudlin says, laughing. "I wanted to answer some of them right then, but I had to make sure the blood spilled just right."
Hudlin now faces a task just as intricate and intense and, as he puts it, "daunting" -- producing the world's biggest awards show, a telecast rich in tradition but not immune to viewers' fickle disposition.