Empire Needed Much More Mariah Carey

Mimi made her highly anticipated appearance on the Fox show, but there wasn't nearly enough of her

By Jean Bentley Oct 06, 2016 2:00 AMTags
Watch: "Empire" Stars Tease Mariah Carey's Appearance

Mariah Carey finally made her debut on Empire—but if you stepped out of the room for a minute while you were watching, you might've missed a full third of her performance on the show. For all the hype that surrounded her appearance, the show barely used Mimi and her undeniable star power.

We first met Mariah—sorry, we mean Kitty, the mega-superstar singer who is clearly based on Mariah Carey, she just isn't technically playing herself—when Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) pulled a few strings and got the singer to collaborate with Jamal (Jussie Smollett). Only Jamal's post-shooting PTSD made it impossible for him to perform.

That initial meeting, which took approximately two minutes in total, was the entirety of Mariah's first scene.

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2016 Fall TV Spoiler-rama
Fox

Then came Jamal and Kitty's duet—well, at least their attempted duet, which almost didn't happen (again, Jamal's PTSD was to blame). You'd probably already seen the first half of the scene, considering Mariah tweeted it a few days ago. The second half? The completed duet, which was also released ahead of time (and sounded wonderful, duh.).

In summation: Those were the two scenes Mariah appeared in. For an appearance that was teased for years before it finally happened, you'd think they would've made the most of the Mimi they had—and put her in more than two scenes that lasted for less than five minutes total.

Sure, it was fun—but we would like to see much more Mariah if she appears on the show in the future.

Empire airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on Fox.