Nick Cannon has openly admitted that he’s just not cut out for traditional monogamy. And the proof is in the ever-increasing size of his family. But one thing’s for sure – he’ll always have a special place in his heart for his ex-wife, R&B diva Mariah Carey. In a recent interview on The Diary Of A CEO podcast, the actor and host opened up about how Carey’s support as he dealt with his 2012 lupus diagnosis likely saved his life.
“She was my rock,” Cannon said in the interview. “She went hard. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for how hard she went with the doctors, with me, my stubbornness.”
Carey and Cannon were married from 2008 to 2016 and share 12-year-old twins, Moroccan and Monroe Cannon. Despite swirling rumors, the Wild ‘N Out host told DJ Vlad in 2021 that his split with Carey had nothing to do with infidelity or scandal. And now he’s admitting that Carey was “the perfect helpmate, the perfect matriarch, the perfect mom, the perfect wife in those scenarios.”
In the Diary of a CEO interview, Cannon admitted his terrifying diagnosis of lupus, an autoimmune disease that can cause inflammation and pain throughout the body led him to worry about whether he’d live to watch his children grow up and wonder if he’d wasted his life. In 2012, he spent time in the hospital due to mild kidney failure. One month later, he suffered a pulmonary embolism. The stress of it all eventually caused a strain on Cannon’s marriage to Carey, who he called his “dream girl.” But he gives her props for handling it all with grace – particularly as she simultaneously navigated the pressure that came along with her own stardom.
“It probably took a toll on us just because of the person I was in my head and the struggles that I was dealing with,” he said. “But it definitely brought us closer together.”