Foot in mouth. Mariah Carey said she never meant to throw shade at Jennifer Lopez when she made her now famous “I don’t know her” remark in the mid-aughts.
“I really was trying to say something nice or say nothing at all,” the “All I Want for Christmas Is You” singer told Pitchfork in a new interview published on Wednesday, November 27.
Carey continued on to note that she doesn’t let that type of drama get to her. “I try to stay away from it because you can’t drown in that. I don’t know how people read comments all the time and then survive.”
The diss in question came during a 2000s interview-turned-meme in which Carey was asked about Lopez, 49. “I don’t know her,” she said with a smile.
She previously clarified her comments to Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen in May 2016. “I can’t believe people still make such a big deal out of it. I’m very forgetful … Apparently, apparently, I’m forgetful, because I don’t remember the fact that it was just like, ‘Hi, I’m so and so,’ and then like, ‘Hi,’ and that’s it,” she explained of a meeting that occurred between the two women.
The Grammy winner continued: “If I had never had a conversation with you, and someone asked me about you, I’d be like, ‘I don’t know him, but he seems cool,’ or, ‘I don’t know him.’”
When the talk show host asked if the “El Anillo” singer seemed “cool,” however, Carey reiterated, “I don’t know her. Like, what am I supposed to say? … It wasn’t like I don’t know who she is. Of course I do.”
Two months earlier, the Shades of Blue star denied throwing her own dig at the Glitter actress after she was caught texting during Carey’s performance of “Vision of Love” and “Infinity” at the 2015 Billboard Music Awards.
“There isn’t [a feud]. I’ll tell you why. Let me tell you something. OK, first of all, that was not fair with the texting thing because I watched a lot of it,” the former American Idol judge told Cohen, 50, on WWHL in March 2016. “It was a long performance, OK? I watched most of it … I may have looked down for one second, and people were like, ‘Look at her! Look at her!’ So not fair. So not fair. I was watching her the whole time.”
