“It was [real]. In no way was any of that planned. By the way, we didn’t anticipate Justin Bieber was going to cry, but we’re not going to go to commercial when he has such an emotional reaction to it. As much as people might think a lot of this is planned manipulation, it’s not at all. It’s produced chaos but we don’t know when these moments are going to happen or who they will come from.”
– Van Toffler, the executive producer behind the MTV VMAs, speaking on whether Nicki Minaj and Miley Cyrus‘ live, on-stage beef was a surprise.