Mariah Carey: ‘I’ve always been a night person’

Touring Britain this week for the first time since 2003, Mariah Carey has a midnight rendezvous with us to talk about music, love and her imminent third marriage — to the Australian billionaire James Packer

 
 
There are a lot of people in Mariah Carey’s house — a grandiose mansion in a gated community in a suburb of Los Angeles. There’s a camera crew, make-up people, photographers, housekeepers, a manager, assistants, bodyguards and people who carry things around. It’s 10pm.

Outside it’s dark and deathly quiet, inside it’s buzzing with preparation for her Sweet Sweet Fantasy European tour (she plays the last of her six UK dates tomorrow in Cardiff and at the O2 in London on Wednesday). All of the prep and every aspect of Carey’s life is being filmed for a documentary.
She brushes past me in a black laced-up gown and Tom Ford heels. Everyone else in the house, including her glamorous manager, seems to be wearing Louboutins. I’m told I may have to wait. So I wait — in the rented house that came furnished with over-stuffed couches, mahogany twirly bits and endless chandeliers.