If it's been your fantasy to learn what really went on behind the scenes of the movie Glitter, we're about to come along and be your hero.
Mariah Carey's infamous film, centering on a down-on-her-luck singer in the 1980s who discovers her big break in the music industry isn't all it's cracked up to be, is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its Sept. 21, 2001 theatrical release. If you know anything about Glitter, you probably know it didn't quite hit the high notes its team had hoped to achieve.
The star, who would go on to impress critics with her acting chops in 2009's Precious, helped develop Glitter as her first lead acting role. "It's really not autobiographical," Mariah told MTV prior to its release. "The girl is a singer, but it's completely not my life. It kinda couldn't be farther from my life."
Although director Vondie Curtis Hall's film included a collection of talented performers, including Terrence Howard, Da Brat and even Padma Lakshmi (!), the film was plagued by a number of setbacks and was ultimately released just 10 days after the attacks of Sept. 11.
Continue reading to see how the film came together, how its stars felt about the final product and why the movie has recently found a surprising new fan base.
1. In 1997, Mariah Carey was attached to a film called All That Glitters, but she put that on hold to work on greatest-hits collection #1's, which was released in November 1998.
2. Following the release of her 1999 album, Rainbow, Mariah left Columbia Records for Virgin Records, and the new deal granted her more control over the film project. Since All That Glitter's script was set in the 1980s, she began planning a disco-influenced album to fit that vibe.
3. The title of the film, along with that of the accompanying soundtrack, was eventually shortened to Glitter.
4. "I've been dying to do [a movie] for three and a half years, but fools wouldn't let me," a frustrated Mariah told MTV in May 2001, about five months before the release date. "I don't have issues with being in front of the camera. I've been a freakin' ham since I was 3 years old!"
5. Mariah worked with screenwriter Kate Lanier, who was hired to help the script evolve from its previous iteration. "We were rewriting a lot on the set," Mariah told MTV. "A lot of things came from improvisation."
6. Da Brat, who was featured on the remix for Mariah's 1996 hit "Always Be My Baby," worked on the Glitter soundtrack and co-starred in the film as Billie's longtime friend Louise. "Me and Mariah are both Aries, and we're both eternally 12, so we hit it off from the get go," the rapper told Variety in 2020.
7. The role of Billie's other close friend Roxanne went to Tia Texada, who explained to Stuff in 2004 that her doubts about the project's success started early on during production.
"It was when they brought mustard-yellow men's football pants to me and said, 'You have to wear these, and we're going to put a red lighting bolt on the butt,'" Tia shared at the time. "Then they wanted me to wear a plastic dress that was shaped like a Christmas tree. At that point, I was like, There is something really, really wrong here."
8. Like Da Brat, Eric Benét was also working on the soundtrack and ended up in the film, playing an R&B singer who became a potential love interest for Billie. Prior to the film's release, he told Euroweb that he didn't "really have big-screen aspirations" but that the "teeny, tiny" role in Glitter just felt right. "But I'm not trying to be no Tom Hanks right now," he quipped.
9. Four years before the release of Hustle & Flow, which would earn him an Oscar nomination, Terrence Howard played Glitter's villainous Timothy, a producer who initially discovered Billie. In 2018, Terrence discussed the film on Watch What Happens Live and said he would rate his experience on it as a 10, given the chance to work with Mariah and the rest of the cast.
As for the film itself, he added, "The product, I don't think we can rate the product. It's such an emotional movie."
10. Another famous face in the film is Padma Lakshmi as a performer named Sylk, and Billie was initially her back-up singer. "God, I cannot get away from this film," she lamented when asked about Glitter on WWHL in 2016. "So rate it as a film. I think it's like a 5. I don't think it's as bad as people say. You know, I don't think it was Citizen Kane."
11. Actor Max Beesley, who has since had recurring roles on Suits and Empire, played producer Dice, Billie's overprotective boyfriend. Terrence has gushed about working with Max, telling Andy Cohen in 2018, "Personally, the emotional experiences I had on there with Max Beesley—I told him that you are, angels wish they were you, that's how talented he is."
12. In July 2021, Mariah took part in promotional events for the soundtrack's lead single, "Loverboy," and seemed out of sorts. Soon after, her team announced that the star had been hospitalized for "extreme exhaustion."
13. In early August, Virgin Records and 20th Century Fox confirmed that the planned mid-August release dates for both the soundtrack and film would be delayed by three weeks amid Mariah's continued recovery. The soundtrack's release was pushed to Sept. 11, and the film would now hit theaters on Sept. 21.
14. The film was indeed released on Sept. 21, 10 days following the devastating events of 9/11. During the premiere that took place on Sept. 21, Mariah said she hoped the film could provide audience's with a light-hearted diversion but that "nothing can overshadow the events that have gone on, and I need to stay focused on that."
15. It goes without saying that Glitter was, well, not exactly a hit. The film made a total of $5.2 million at the box office on a reported $22 million production budget, and after the poor performance of both the movie and soundtrack, Virgin Records dropped Mariah from the label despite having just signed her months prior. Critics weren't impressed, either, with the film holding a six percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
16. Just over a year later, Mariah already had regrets about the film. "It started out as a concept with substance, but it ended up being geared to 10-year-olds," she told USA Today. "It lost a lot of grit. It was gritless, in fact. I kind of got in over my head."
17. During a 2006 interview with The Guardian, Max defended Mariah, saying the star "really showed her acting boots" but that many of her better scenes didn't make the final version. "They just cut all that out, and I nearly cried when I saw it," he recalled.
18. In her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah, the star offered more perspective, calling it a "a collision of bad luck, bad timing and sabotage." She added that she "was really inhibited for many reasons by the acting coach."
19. Luckily, this wasn't quite the end of the story. In 2018, fans launched a #JusticeForGlitter campaign that helped the Glitter soundtrack to hit No. 1 on the iTunes chart. Mariah celebrated the unexpected milestone by tweeting screaming face, sparkle and heart emojis.
20. For better or worse, the movie continues to live on in pop culture. A joke in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days refers to the film as underrated, but sure enough, a quick Twitter search of the words "glitter" and "underrated" manages to unearth a hidden community of the film's fans.