Mariah Carey talks dressing down for "Precious" role
Mariah Carey is undeniably a very glamorous person, never one to shy away from elaborate clothes, hair and makeup (well, except for dressing up as a male stalker in her "Obsessed" video!). But for her role in the film "Precious" - formerly titled "Push" - which won her critical praise at the Sundance festival earlier this year, the singer eagerly transformed from glamorous pop star into dowdy social worker Mrs. Weiss.
"My character in 'Precious' is the antithesis of me. She is a social worker. She's very demure. She's very stoic," Carey explained to MTV News about the role. "She's just like, 'I'm doing my job,' she has an accent."
However, Carey is quick to point out that for the film, about a pregnant and abused overweight New York teen, she agreed to the transformation because she trusted the film's director, Lee Daniels. "It's a whole thing, but Lee Daniels is a bona-fide genius so I put myself in his hands," she explained. "And he was like, 'No makeup. We're going to put dark stuff under your eyes. You're hair is going to be cut and short and brown. And you're gonna wear big clothing and it's going to be a whole thing.'"
But for Carey, her looks are only part of the character - for the role, she had to dig deep into herself to figure out who she is as a person. "That's all the exterior, but really what I had to tap into was who this woman was."
She went on to explain that her co-stars Mo'Nique and Gabby Sidibe (who plays the title character), had to work hard to play these people and that one of the women's performances especially left a mark on Carey. "There's a very deep scene with Mo'Nique, who plays the mother, and she deserves an Oscar for this performance," Carey said. "I'm saying it now and I really hope she gets that because that's what she deserves - I've never seen a performance like this." (MTV News)
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