Watch Will Ferrell Dish on Nixed Mariah Carey Cameo in ‘The House’
Will Ferrell has confirmed the details of the planned (and nixed) Mariah Carey cameo in the actor’s new film The House.
The production booked the singer for a one-day shoot where Carey was set to appear as herself in the comedy about a suburban couple’s home casino. However, when the film arrived on Friday, the Carey cameo didn’t make the final cut.
In the lead-up to The House, some of the film’s actors openly discussed Carey’s outlandish on-set requests, and on Watch What Happens, Ferrell spoke about the canceled Carey cameo for the first time.
As Ferrell told Andy Cohen, the singer didn’t showed up until four hours after her scheduled set time, and that the singer’s list of demands included a trailer full of stuffed lamb dolls, a tribute to her fanbase.
“One script note was ‘I don’t want to do this scene.’ Even though it was totally approved at the time,” Ferrell said. Additionally, Carey was recruited to perform one of her songs in the film, but when she arrived on set, she decided she didn’t want to sing that track and suggested another.
“[She wanted to sing] something else, which is hard with clearance, and it became quite a kerfuffle… a.k.a. shitstorm,” Ferrell said.
Hours passed with the singer on set but the scene still didn’t film. “At 11 p.m., there was a knock on my trailer door and they said ‘You could go home,'” Ferrell said. “I got in my car and left everyone at set, and it didn’t happen.”
In a May interview with SiriusXM’s Entertainment Weekly Radio, actor Rob Heubel dished about the failed cameo.
“We did some reshoots with a pop star named Mariah Carey. It did not go well,” Heubel said. “She was hired to sing one song, and she was like, ‘You guys, I don’t want to sing that song.’ They’re like, ‘We hired you to sing this song.”
Heubel also provided some details into the singer’s script note. “So then they were going to do this bit where they shoot her, I think, and they kill her — in the movie. Not in real life. But she didn’t want that,” Heubel said.
“She was like, ‘I don’t think my character would get killed by bullets. What if I deflected them like Wonder Woman?’ They were like, ‘Mariah, we don’t have time for [this]. You’re getting paid so much money. We have you for one day. We don’t have time to argue with you. Just do it.’ She just didn’t want to do what they wanted her to do.”