By Ruben V. Nepales
Philippine Daily Inquirer

LOS ANGELES, California—Mariah Carey has gone from debuting in one of the worst pictures of the year 2001 to a movie that was a critical and audience sensation in the recent Sundance Film Festival.



Yes, Mariah may now live down the ignominy of “Glitter,” which earned a Razzie Award nomination for the Worst Picture of the Year and gave her a Worst Actress prize. She is in the cast of “Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire,” which was a big hit in Sundance and won the jury and audience awards. It was only the third time in the 25-year history of the festival that the same movie captured both plums.

Mariah, along with her cast mates — Mo’Nique, Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe, Lenny Kravitz and Paula Patton — are winning rave reviews. “Push: Based...” reportedly is so good that Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, through their respective companies, have jumped in to help Lionsgate— which nabbed the film’s distribution rights—promote the movie.

Variety quoted Oprah as saying about the drama: “I’ve never seen anything like it. The moment I saw ‘Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire’ I knew I wanted to do whatever I could to encourage other people to see this movie. The film is so raw and powerful—it split me open.”

Amazing movie

In an earlier interview, Mariah was already jazzed up about the movie which is not to be confused with “Push,” a sci-fi thriller which stars Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning. The music superstar who has had the most No. 1 songs (even more than Elvis Presley) and spent the most time on top of the Billboard charts (surpassing the record of the Beatles) told us, “‘Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire’ is an amazing movie that I’m really proud to be a part of.”
Mariah, who also earned respectable notices in her other new indie film, “Tennessee,” correctly foreshadowed the acclaim that “Push: Based …” would get in Sundance: “Everybody’s amazing in this movie — Mo’Nique, Gabby Sidibe and Lenny Kravitz. They are phenomenal. I was really thankful to be part of the cast. The film is set in New York and is about a girl who goes through a lot of abuse. I play a social worker named Mrs. Weiss.”

The movie, directed by Lee Daniels, is about an overweight, illiterate teen in Harlem, who is pregnant with her second child, and who is invited to enroll in an alternative school.
“It’s such a deep movie,” the singer-actress said. “The subject matter is so intense that it’s really from an entirely different mind-set. It couldn’t be more opposite from ‘Tennessee.’” The latter film narrates the journey of two brothers (played by Adam Rothenberg and Ethan Peck, Gregory Peck’s grandson), one of whom is terminally ill, who meet an aspiring singer (Mariah) along the way.

Indie route

Of her infamous “Glitter,” Mariah said, “The film came out on Sept. 11, 2001. There couldn’t have been a worse day. It was like anything that could go wrong with that movie went wrong. What I’m doing with ‘Tennessee’ and ‘Push,’ is that I’m going the route of independent movies. I really didn’t want to go the other way the first time but it just so happened that people were always like, ‘We need to put her in something where she’s playing a star.’ It was kind of put upon me, rather than allowing me to do what I really wanted which was to lose myself, fall into a character and really be an actress — shed the layers of who I am and dive into it.”

Most critics who praised Mariah’s performance in “Push: Based…” pointed out how she is almost unrecognizable in the film. She relished being able to disappear into a character and not be Mariah Carey, the sexy, glam singer. She explained, “It’s really easy for all of us to fall into that vanity thing when you’re doing this as a job, but in doing these two movies, I had to throw all that (vanity) aside ... In ‘Push…,’ Lee (Daniels), the director, actually wanted me to eat more before the movie to gain weight.”

Biracial kid

Since “Tennessee” tackles family dysfunction and sacrifices, among other themes, Mariah was asked for her thoughts on those topics. “Like some of us, I came from a dysfunctional situation when I was growing up,” revealed the star whose parents are Patricia Hickey, an Irish-American, and Alfred Roy Carey, an African-American. “My mom made a lot of sacrifices. She was a classically trained singer and she worked really hard. She went to Juilliard. She left her small town in Illinois when she was 16, met my father and embarked on an interracial marriage at a time when it wasn’t the thing to do. Both my parents sacrificed a lot.”

The youngest girl in the family admitted that even in the 1970s, it was tough being a multiracial kid. “It was very difficult, to be honest,” she revealed. “I didn’t know what I was. I have an older brother and sister who were like me but they weren’t there (in the house) so for me, it was a journey of self-discovery, trying to figure out who I was and who should I relate to — my white mother or my father, an African-American. It was strange. But just to see what’s going on now with the world, it does give me hope as a multiracial person.”

Her trials as a biracial kid was aggravated by her family’s frequent moving around. “It was an identity crisis for me as a kid, people not knowing how to put a name on what they felt I was. Plus I grew up moving around a lot with my mother. Everything would change, depending on what type of neighborhood I lived in. There was always an adjustment period that happened.”
Mariah, whose “Glitter” came on the heels of a hospital stay when she suffered a physical and emotional breakdown, continued: “I did have to go through a whole journey in terms of looking into myself and abandoning the chains that surrounded me before in my life. I don’t want to sound too dramatic about that but it was a difficult thing for me to go through. I think everything happens for a reason. It was one of those situations where whatever doesn’t kill you makes you a stronger person.”

Married since April last year to rapper and actor Nick Cannon, Mariah declared with a smile, “I definitely feel more complete than before. There’s a void when you don’t feel like you’ve found the other part of who you are. I’m in a different place right now that’s nice to experience.”
“People were definitely surprised that we got married so quickly,” Mariah said about her whirlwind romance with Nick, who is 10 years her junior (her ex-husband, record exec Tommy Mottola, was 20 years her senior). “Everybody else was way more freaked out about it than we were. We were like, ‘This is normal, this seemed like it was the right thing to do.’ It just seemed natural to us. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary to us but I know it was shocking to the rest of the world, our friends and families.”

Camp Mariah

Asked to give an update about her camp for underprivileged children in New York, she answered, “Camp Mariah is still going. It’s still a great place for 600 kids a year, with 300 kids each session. I didn’t get to go up that much last year but I’m looking forward to it this year ... It’s a career awareness camp where kids can go and learn about their options in life. A lot of the kids are from inner cities who have never left their homes. They get to experience life in another setting. They learn about different potential jobs. But it’s not a boring camp. The kids who go there really want to learn and expand their horizon. The camp has brought me a lot of joy.”

Complimented for her voluptuous figure in an age where the norm is a stick-thin shape, Mariah said, “I’ve come to terms with the fact that I am not going to look like everyone else. It’s one of those things where you have to be strong enough within yourself.”

So how does the singer known for her five-octave range relax? “I take a bath,” she cooed with a laugh. “That’s my favorite thing. I love long baths and relaxing with candle light — that type of thing. After that, we’ll see what happens but it’s definitely about a long, sumptuous bath.”
Are having children in the agenda? “We’ll see,” Mariah replied with a smile.