At the Grammy Awards on February 4, Mariah Carey gave out the first award of the night. But according to the show’s executive producer, a lot of people went to great lengths to make sure she got there on time.
Grammys executive producer Ben Winston told the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast that because of the rain in LA on Sunday, many artists were stuck in traffic. Fifteen minutes before showtime, he was told that Mariah, Christina Aguilera, Kacey Musgraves, Lizzo and other artists who were set for early appearances wouldn’t be able to get there in time.
“If we don’t have Mariah Carey presenting that award in part one, what do you do?” Winston added. “In the end, they got a golf cart and [picked] Mariah Carey up out of her SUV that was stuck in traffic, with four people running around the side with umbrellas to make sure she didn’t get so wet that she couldn’t go onstage.”
“We literally drove a golf cart the wrong way up the freeway and brought her back so she made it on time,” Winston said. As a result, Mariah was there and able to present the Best Pop Solo Performance Grammy to Miley Cyrus.
And speaking of Miley, Winston also revealed that after her first rehearsal, when he went backstage to talk to her, she told him, “Yeah, I think I’ll do the show.”
“I looked at her as if to say, ‘Is she kidding?’ Oh, my God,” he recalled. “I actually think that it was more about, ‘I reserve the right to pull out of this if I don’t fancy it,’ and that’s the superstar she is, really.”
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