In a revelation that could fit right at home in some “only in Hollywood” parody script but is said to be true, one-time music executive Damion “Damizza” Young recently spilled some on-set tea that manages to be almost as surreal as it is surprising: Eminem once suggested none other than Mariah Carey to play his mother in 8 Mile. The Queen of Melisma nearly played Slim Shady’s tough-luck, hard-living mom.
It all came to light on Damizza’s recent visit to the TFU Podcast, when he reminisced about a potentially game-changing moment from the early 2000s that, unfortunately, never came to fruition. The way he tells it, Eminem himself contacted him with a rather outlandish request: he wanted Carey, who is just four years his senior, to play the down-on-her-luck mother of Jimmy “B-Rabbit” Smith.
Check out this Article.
“So I go to Mariah, and I’m like, ‘Look, Eminem wants to meet you,’ and she’s like, ‘No,’” Damizza recalled, laughing. It’s a moment that almost certainly left Carey scratching her head while at the very same time fielding her movie offers, which famously included one that became a critical punching bag for Glitter. When Damizza explained that Eminem was proposing a movie role, not a duet, Carey hesitated, intrigued, but I’m guessing still squinting at the entire proposition.
Although Damizza first attempted to dissuade Eminem from pursuing that casting, “I begged him not to give Mariah the movie role,” admitted Damizza; he eventually acquiesced and arranged a call between the megastars. It was then that things took a strange turn for the more awkward.
“I want you to play my mother,” Eminem reportedly told Mariah on the phone.
She didn’t like that s**t at all,’” Damizza recalled. “Her insecurity kicked in big time.”
And honestly, who could blame her? When you’re asked to play the chain-smoking, wild-eyed mother of a rapper who is not even four years your junior, you’re in a challenging sales position even when that rapper is Eminem.
It would eventually go to Kim Basinger, whose raw, intense performance would be widely praised and bring much of 8 Mile‘s emotional power. Mariah would subsequently find her music footing, and 8 Mile became a cultural juggernaut, catapulting Eminem to an Oscar for “Lose Yourself” and immortalizing his status in music and film.
Yet the notion of Mariah Carey as a scrappy Detroit matriarch persists as one of those “what ifs” that make music history so weirdly wonderful. Now, we all envision that other world where the butterfly calls out B-Rabbit from across the trailer park.
0 Comments