Mariah Carey is hitting a former personal assistant with a huge lawsuit alleging she tried to blackmail her for $8 million.
Carey’s legal filings, which were obtained by TMZ Jan. 16, say Lianna Azarian made secret recordings of the singer and threatened to release them if her boss didn’t pay up the huge sum.
LOS ANGELES, CA – OCTOBER 09: Recording Artist Mariah Carey poses in the press room at the 2018 American Music Awards at Microsoft Theater on October 9, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic)
The star’s lawsuit says sometime after Azarian was hired as an executive assistant in March 2015, she started recording “personal activities” of Carey that would be “embarrassing” and cause severe damage to her personal and professional reputation if it were to get out. The videos that resulted, which were not explicitly detailed in the filing but described as “intimate,” were made without Carey’s knowledge, according to the suit. Some of the clips were said to have been shown to Azarian’s friends and the former assistant stated she’d put them up for sale if she were ever fired.
The documents state that Azarian earned up to $327,000 a year but Carey gave her the pink slip in November 2017. Then, Carey’s suit claims the blackmailing started. Azarian is said to have demanded $8 million from “The Butterfly Returns” residency headliner. If Carey couldn’t provide that cash, Azarian said she’d release the aforementioned videos and other reputation-ruining details.
It’s not clear exactly what kinds of information Azarian had threatened to reveal, but Carey did come clean about her struggle with bipolar disorder in an April 2018 issue of People magazine. She explained that she only decided to open up about it nearly two decades after being diagnosed because “I didn’t want to carry around the stigma of a lifelong disease that would define me and potentially end my career.”
“I was so terrified of losing everything,” she added, noting that until recently getting some treatment she “lived denial and isolation and in constant fear someone would expose me.”
In addition to the alleged blackmailing, Carey said Azarian used her credit card to make expensive personal purchases. She’s said to have used the “With You” singer’s name to nab steep discounts by claiming the items she bought were for the famed vocalist.
Carey, who seeks unspecified damages but wants $3 million, has said she’s tried and failed to get the videos returned along with proof of other criminal acts.
