The Butler spitting scene brought back painful memories for Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey was left in tears during one scene in her new movie The Butler – and she wasn’t even it it. The singer returned to acting for the powerful new Lee Daniels film and admits the race message behind the story of a White House butler’s life was tough to watch at times, particularly in one scene when Yaya Alafia’s African-American character Carol Hammie is spat on by a white waitress.
Carey, who conducted interviews with the actress to promote the film over the weekend (03-05Aug13), admits she has been in the same position as the character in the past.
She reveals, “That actually happened to me. That scene was almost the deepest to me in the movie because I know what the character went through. It happened to me on a school bus.”
And Alafia admits it was a tough scene to shoot: “It took a lot of encouragement from Lee (Daniels). For the girl to do that to me. It just had to be real. We tried to do it fake and it didn’t work. Lee is kind of relentless, telling us to do it again. It felt real. The stench was real. I felt like I had to vomit afterwards.
“My heart rate was high. I was shaking. It took a really long time after Lee yelled ‘cut’ to shake it off. That was probably the roughest scene that I’ve shot thus far in my life.”