Mariah Carey: I "hated" serving as an 'American Idol' judge, it was like working "every day in hell with Satan"

Mariah Carey has opened up about her stint as an American Idol judge -- and although she tried to joke about it, it's pretty clear she considers it an extremely negative experience and isn't open to a potential JLo-like return in the future. 


When asked whether she liked her time as a judge on this year's twelfth season of Idol, Carey replied, "No, honestly, I hated it," during a Wednesday interview with New York's HOT 97 radio station.

"Here's what it was," she continued. "I was led to believe -- I was the first person signed on. I don't want to say anything that's going to -- heaven forbid people [make it] look like I'm saying something negative -- but honestly, I thought it was going to be a three-person panel."

Carey was seemingly referring to how she was unhappy with the addition of Nicki Minaj as a fourth judge on the twelfth-season panel -- a move that basically resulted in the two divas publicly feuding for months.

According to previous reports, Carey had initially assumed it was just going to be herself, Randy Jackson and Keith Urban on the panel since Jennifer Lopez had served as the only female judge two seasons in a row alongside Jackson and rocker Steven Tyler. 


"They gave me a nice dangling monetary moment, and I was just like, 'Okay. Randy Jackson will be there; I've known him forever. He used to play bass for me. Like, this isn't a big deal. This will be nothing.' But it wasn't that. It was like hell, like going to work every day in hell with Satan," Carey said with a big laugh.

"Nah, I'm just playing. It didn't affect me that much, but I was disappointed."

Carey did, however, tell the HOT 97 radio host one good thing that came out of her Idol experience.

"You know what I loved? I loved the contestants. And some of them that were so good and also really good people, you could tell. It was just disappointing when they would, for political reasons, not put people through," the singer explained.

"I was like, 'I do not have to sit here and do this. I would prefer to just put this person in the studio and record a record with them,' or tell another producer like, 'Yo, you should use this artist because they're beautiful, they can sing, they're talented.' But that's the way it is on that kind of TV thing... I like being in the studio and going on my own tours, etc. So we're going back to that!"






About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski