Think Jennifer Lopez and Mariah Carey don’t have anything in common besides being badass divas? Think again.
Crossover success
Both Carey and Lopez got their start on stage before crossing over to be triple threats on big and small screens.
Carey’s first acting job after being a household name for her legendary pipes was in the 1999 Chris O’Donnell and Renée Zellweger film The Bachelor.
Lopez got her start as a fly girl dancing on In Living Color in 1991, and started landing acting gigs on prime time TV shows like Second Chances and South Central soon after.
Box-office disappointment
People still make fun of Carey’s Glitter, despite the fact it came out more than 15 years ago.
And who can forget 2003’s Gigli — the movie that many believe sent both Ben Affleck and Lopez’s careers down the toilet for a hot minute.
Rallying after defeat
After her Glitter bomb, Carey went on to nab roles in the Academy Award-winning films Precious and Lee Daniels’ The Butler.
And, well, we all know that Lopez was able to rebound. Her music career is thriving, and she currently stars in the NBC drama Shades of Blue.
Cartoonized
Carey was turned into an adorable cartoonized version of herself in the 1999 video for her single “Heartbreaker.”
Lopez’s cartoon experience wasn’t so pleasant. She and then-boyfriend Ben Affleck were lampooned pretty hardcore on a 2003 episode of South Park based completely on them titled “Fat Butt and Pancake Head.”
‘American Idol’
Both Carey and Lopez served time as judges on American Idol, though their experiences were very different.
While Lopez is an Idol fan favorite and seems to thrive in the competition’s environment, Carey’s sentiments about the show are not so warm and fuzzy.
“It’s so boring and so fake,” the Carey said in a May 2015 interview with an Australian radio show. “I’m sorry, I just think it’s… when I say it’s fake… I mean like you have to make up things to say about people. Half the time the performances are good, you just be like, ‘It was good,’ and you feel like ending it there. ‘You were really good.'”
In the same interview, Carey admitted it would be a cold day in hell if she were ever to return to the show.
“Hell, no! Absolutely not, that was the worst experience of my life,” she said. “I’m not going to get into what it was. Let’s just say I don’t think they had any intentions of us having a good experience through that show.”
Vegas residencies
Jennifer Lopez took up residency at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas Resort and Casino in January 2016, and plans to run her show, All I Have, through the end of the year.
Carey set up shop at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace on May 6, 2015, and plans to run her show, #1 to Infinity, until September. It features all 18 of her No. 1 hits in one concert.
Diddy
Carey worked with Sean “P. Diddy” Combs on the 1997 hit “Honey” off her album Butterfly.
Lopez was also close with Combs, though her relationship with him was a bit different and of a personal nature. The power couple reigned supreme from 1999 to 2001.
Lending their voices to animation
Lopez voices Shira the saber-toothed cat in all of the Ice Age movies.
It was recently announced that Carey will enter the world of animation by voicing Mayor Marion Grange in the upcoming The Lego Batman Movie, which will also feature the voice acting of Will Arnett, Rosario Dawson, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Cera and Zach Galifianakis.
Tommy Mottola
CBS/Columbia Records mogul Mottola — who was married to Carey from 1993 to 1997 — is credited with discovering her and getting her career off the ground in the early ’90s.
Legend has it that Mottola signed Lopez to a record deal in 1998 solely to get revenge on Carey for their divorce. Several songs that were meant to be recorded by Carey ended up as hit singles on Lopez’s first album. The gossip mill also says that Lopez dated Mottola for a short period during this time.
This is supposedly the reason for Carey and Lopez’s rumored long-standing beef.
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