Mariah Carey. Samir Hussein/WireImage
The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper is opening up about working with Mariah Carey.
Klepper, 45, appeared in a Funny or Die holiday sketch alongside Carey in 2015, playing one of the singer’s managers. At the time, the “All I Want for Christmas Is You” songstress teamed up with Funny or Die for a series of sketches to celebrate Christmas.
“She was awesome,” Klepper said on the Thursday, June 27, episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen. “She was a little under the weather so the production was running 10 hours behind. They literally brought her back on set and they were like, ‘We have to do 10 hours of work in an hour,’ and they just ripped through it and she was frickin’ great.”
Klepper continued his praise of Carey, adding, “She was improvising. She was funny. She was a pro.”
Host Andy Cohen then quipped, “You’ll never get that 10 hours back,” to which Klepper responded, “You’ll never get that 10 hours [back] but if you can do it in an hour, why not?”
Jordan Klepper. Kayla Oaddams/WireImage
“So they had 11 hours banked for the shoot and then it was [condensed]?” Cohen asked Klepper for clarification. “Yep,” responded Klepper, who added that the “creative had to be changed completely” to accommodate Carey, 55.
“I don’t think she was willing to move a ton so they rewrote it in that hour and I gotta tell you, it came out great,” Klepper said.
In the 2015 sketch, Carey asks her two managers — one played by Klepper — to take charge of casting a Santa Clause for a Christmas performance but the power goes to their heads, leading to all of the auditionees walking out.
As the voice behind one of the most enduring Christmas songs of all time, Carey is known to take the holidays seriously. In fact, she cooks for three days straight over the Christmas season.
“I like to cook every year. I cook on the 23rd, 24th and 25th — all different menus,” Carey told GQ in a video interview in 2019.
Mariah said her fondness for cooking often surprises people, who expect her to call on professional help. “People don’t believe that I cook, by the way. They think that I’m lying,” she said. “But the truth is that I do, and I actually love cooking.”
Added the musician: “I don’t usually cook during the year until Christmas time, but I’ve been cooking a little bit more recently because my kids kind of like it when I cook.”