You give us diva moments, Mariah Carey tells ‘squirming’ Duchess
MARIAH CAREY, the singer, has told the Duchess of Sussex she too is a “diva” in their podcast interview, as the Duchess confessed the accusation “stopped her in her tracks” and made her “sweat”.
Carey, 53, who has built a career embracing the label, told the former actress: “You give us diva moments sometimes, Meghan.” The Duchess, who sounded aghast at the remark, laughed before asking: “What kind of diva moments do I give you?”
The pair spoke in the second episode of the Duchess’s new Spotify podcast, Archetypes, in which she discussed the history of the word diva and how its meaning has changed. In a voiceover at the end of the episode, the Duchess – in her role as presenter – said the remark had left her concerned about the “nonsense” Carey might have read about her.
“It was all going swimmingly, I mean really well, until that moment happened which, I don’t know about you, but it stopped me in my tracks when she called me a diva,” she said.
“You couldn’t see me, obviously, but I started to sweat a little bit. I started squirming in my chair in this quiet revolt. Like wait. What? No.
“What? How could you? That’s not true. Why would you say that?
“My mind genuinely was just spinning with what nonsense she must have read or clicked on to make her say that.” The Duchess said Carey was quick to reassure her and that she meant the label as “chic” and “aspirational”.
“She must have felt my nervous laughter and you all would have heard it too and she jumped right in to make sure I was crystal clear,” she added of their pre-recorded conversation.
“When she said diva, she was talking about the way that I dress, the posture, the clothing, a quote-unquote ‘fabulousness’ as she sees it.
“She meant diva as a compliment. I heard it as a dig. Heard it as the word diva as I think of it, but in that moment, as she explained to me, she meant it as chic, as aspirational.”
In the exchange, the pair discussed the concept of a diva, with the Duchess saying: “That’s really important for people to remember that there might be this persona, this diva thing we can play into. It’s not something I connect to but for you, it’s been a huge part.”
Carey replies: “You give us diva moments sometimes, Meghan. Don’t even act like ….” The Duchess responded: “What kind of diva moments do I give you?”
Carey laughs, starting to say “don’t act like you” before appearing to backtrack to tell her: “It’s also the visual.”
The 41-year-old Duchess confirmed: “Oh, it’s the look.”
The accusation of being a diva will be particularly challenging for the former royal, who has been called “Duchess Difficult” for her alleged behaviour while in the UK.
New York-born Carey, on the other hand, has built a career and won legions of fans by embracing rumours and reality of her divadom as “fun” with “half of it just for laughs”.
In the podcast, called The Duality Of Diva with Mariah Carey, she and the Duchess discuss their shared upbringing as mixed-race schoolgirls.
During the 46-minute episode, the Duchess said she only began to understand what it is to be treated like a black woman when she started dating Prince Harry.
She says: “I mean, if there’s any time in my life that it’s been more focused on my race, it’s only once I started dating [my husband].
“Then I started to understand what it was like to be treated like a black woman because, up until then, I had been treated like a mixed woman, and things really shifted.”