Posted by | Ray Cornelius
I’m not sure how this one slipped by me today but apparently this is the first image of former Idol judge Mariah Carey as Hattie Pearl in the upcoming Lee Daniels’ film, The Butler.
Released by the Weinstein Company, the photo shows a very stripped down Mariah as a field worker standing in the middle of a cotton patch. She appears to be make-up free with a frumpy dress and her hair tied up in a scarf. She also appears to be staring off while picking cotton like the other workers around her. This is definitely not the Mariah we’re used to seeing on stage or on the red carpet. She is usually in something sparkly with cleavage “way out to there,” face beat and a pair of killer pumps.
According to Indie Wire, Mariah plays a brief role as young Cecil Gaines’ mother, who, along with Gaine’s father, is a sharecropper. Supposedly, Mariah’s scene is in the beginning of the film.
As previously reported, The Butler is based on the true life story of Eugene Allen (played by Forest Whitaker), the butler who served eight presidents as the White House’s head butler from 1952 to 1986. The film stars a bevy of who’s who actors including Oprah Winfrey, Lenny Kravitz, Terrence Howard, David Oyelowho Colman Domingo, John Cusack, Alan Rickman, Jane Fonda, Melissa Leo, Liev Schreiber, Jesse Williams, Aml Ameen, Lenny Kravitz, and Cuba Gooding Jr. I also learned from the film’s IMDB page that rapper David Banner is starring in the film too.
RC will keep you posted as I am sure more pics will be released in the coming weeks. The Butler opens in theaters nationwide on August 16.
