Ryan Seacrest thinks Mariah Carey's disastrous New Year's Eve performance was "unfortunate for everybody".
Mariah Carey
The 46-year-old singer was performing in Times Square, New York, on Saturday (31.12.16) as part of 'Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest' when she was plagued with technical difficulties that caused her to storm off stage but the 42-year-old presenter - who has hosted the spectacular since 2006 - insists the situation could have happened to anyone because working on live TV is so "complicated".
He said: "I'm just catching up on all this, but there's been a lot reported about the performance in Times Square for Mariah. And, you know, just to talk about it for a second, it is difficult to perform in Times Square.
"She had done it before because she was the first musical guest that we had had live when I started doing the show years -- about a decade ago. So she had seen it. She knows what Times Square's about. It's complicated. ... Imagine every single outlet -- TV outlet -- in the world is there, so there's all kinds of technical things going on.
"For Mariah, I was up there at the stage to introduce her on the same stage she performs on. And it's live television, and things happen on live TV, and, you know, if something goes wrong, it's unfortunate for anybody."
However, the former 'American Idol' host admitted he didn't actually see the disastrous performance because he had to run to a different stage in order to lead the countdown to the turning of the year.
Speaking on his 'On Air With Ryan Seacrest' radio show, he said: "Interestingly, from where I was, I remember after I introduced the artist, I immediately physically moved from that stage back down several blocks to the other stage. So I didn't have a visual."
But while the 'Hero' singer's management team have laid the blame at Dick Clark Productions, Ryan insists producers would never have set out to make Mariah look bad.
He said: "I know this team of producers. I've known these guys for years. I knew Dick Clark very, very well. This is a team that wants to do everything they can to accommodate any artist.
"We are in the business of wanting people to look good and, believe me, tricky things, tough things can happen. It happens on live television. You've seen artists before in a concert pull out their earpiece because something happens. Something could have happened in the ears. I wasn't in those ears.
"It's just unfortunate that it comes to all of this. It's a night of celebration and a night of fun."
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