It hasn’t taken long for Mariah Carey to shrug off her break-up with Australian billionaire beau James Packer, say US reports.
At the official premiere party for her new reality show Mariah’s World, her brash back-up dancer Bryan Tanaka was declaring his love for the diva to anyone who would listen.
“I’ve always had a thing for Mariah. I love her so much,” Bryan, 33, gushes to E! News at the exclusive bash, which was held at Catch NYC.
“Just make sure you tune in to the show and you’ll see kind of how everything happens.”
“We’ve been friends for a long time,” Bryan adds with a smile. “I do a little dance move here and there and we have a good time. It will be fun.”
Mariah, who is 13 years Bryan’s senior, was coy about their relationship, but the pair was snapped getting their PDA on during a vacation in Hawaii just days before the show’s launch.
As for what makes their relationship so special, Bryan confides, “Something connected with us back in the day and there was just a mutual admiration.
“She saw something in me that I actually didn’t recognise at first, from that it was over. It was set in history that we were gonna be connected some way, some how.”
On last night’s Mariah’s World premiere, Tanaka sheds some light into their decade-long friendship. “It was about 2005-2006 is when I first met Mariah Carey,” he explains.
“I was a young buck, I was this green rookie when I first worked with her.”
Since their first meeting, Bryan says that “so many things have happened” over the years.
“I grew up, I turned into a man and she’s gone through so much,” he adds.
“I think it’s gonna take some time for us to get back to that comfortabiltiy where we were just homies, where we could just talk.”
James Packer, 49, does make a brief appearance in the opening episode of Mariah’s World, despite earlier reports that he had demanded to be edited out.
