ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So first, let’s talk about the rehearsal.
There are anonymous production sources quoted as saying Carey skipped it.
Stella Bulochnikov: Not true.
Not only did she not ditch rehearsal, we got to Times Square at 2:30.
They weren’t ready for her until 3:20.
We waited around for their stage manager.
We had the stage from 3:20 to 3:50.
She had a dance stand-in for the musical number.
The most important thing to her was the sound.
The sound was coming in choppy.
She was assured it would work by the evening.
She did an interview with Ryan Seacrest at about 10:35 where her in-ear was very choppy.
She could barely hear Ryan.
She was struggling to hear him through the noise of Times Square.
We then went to [producer] Mark Shimmel’s assigned talent executive to Mariah.
She said, “Those are not the ears she’ll be working with for the performance.
The ears she will be working with are in the trailer.”
We went to the trailer at 10:45.
She did touch-ups because she’s supposed to go on at 11:38.
We put in the ears and did the mic pack.
We walked to the holding tent about 11:20.
She can’t hear it, it’s faint.
They changed the battery pack.
She said she still couldn’t hear.
She said, “Great, let’s go to the stage.”
It’s now four minutes to showtime.
She says, “I hear nothing in my ears, my ears are dead.”
The other stage manager says, “It will work right when we go live.”
Then things start to get chaotic.
They start counting her downfour minutes, three minutes.
Mariah: “I can’t hear.”
Them: “You’re gonna hear when it goes livetwo minutes!”
So, right when it goes live, she can’t hear anything.
The ears are dead.
She can’t hear her music.
It’s a madhouse.
At the point, there’s no way to recover.
Was there an attempt from her team to get her off the stage earlier?
At one point one of her backup dancers seemed to motion her to get off the stage.
She should have walked off and thrown the mic at somebody’s headthatwould have been a great moment.
This is a verbatim conversation.
I asked, “What happened?”
He said, “I just talked to my guys and I confirmed her in-ears didn’t work.
Couldn’t she just wing it?”
I’m like, “What are you talking about ‘winging it’?
Are you on glue?”
He’s like, “What do you want me to do?”
I said, “I want you to cut the West Coast feed.”
He calls me back and says, “We can’t do it.”
He said, “We just won’t do it.
Do you want to do a joint statement?”
And I said, “No, I want you to go f yourself.”
And that was it.
What happened with Carey after she left the stage?
She was gracious enough to walk over to Seacrest and do the ball-drop moment and then she left.
How’s she feeling today about all this?
She’s just ignoring it.
She’s got so many more important things to do.
And this goes under the heading of “no good deed” because she was doing them a favor.
Shimmel’s direct request was, “I’m begging you to do this.
America needs this moment after Donald Trump, etc.”
What a bunch of nonsense.
That says to me they wanted a viral moment at any expense.
And that’s not a company with integrity for 50-something years.
That’s not who Dick Clark was.
Fans are also accusing her of lip-syncing.
It’s not lip-syncing.
Lip-syncing is when people don’t sing at all.
This is what people should understand.
You’re not singing at the Philharmonic.
Every artist who goes out there sings to tracks.
What Mariah was doing was singing to tracks.
What you heard on the second song, “Emotions,” was her going to sing it live.
That’s why you heard no vocals.
It’s a song she sings every other day.
At least they are acknowledging there was a technical problem, though?
But to not apologize to her formally?
We live in this viral world where anybody will do anything for a viral moment.
This article has been updated since it was first published.
