Jennifer Lopez Reveals Why She Recruited Cardi B to Appear in ‘Hustlers’

Jennifer Lopez shared how she convinced Cardi B to star alongside her in Hustlers when she visited The Tonight Show on Tuesday.

The actress revealed that she called the rapper, who used to work as an exotic dancer, because she was struggling to learn how to pole dance for the movie. “I was like, ‘You have to be in this movie. You know this world. You could teach us,'” she said. “I was like, ‘But I’m learning how to pole dance.’ I said, ‘It is really hard. This is really hard.’ She goes, ‘Oh, yeah. It took me years, years to master.’ She goes, ‘But now I’m great at it.'”

“I was like, ‘Well, then you have to be in the movie’ and she was like, ‘Absolutely,'” she continued.

Lopez said that while the film is Cardi B’s first time acting, the rapper didn’t need any advice. “She’s such a natural at what she does,” said the actress. “This was so suited to her. She really knew this world and I told her, ‘You just have to be the person that you were when I first started looking at you on Instagram. That girl, that’s the girl that we need.’ And she was like, ‘OK.’ She knew exactly what to do.”

She later spoke about Usher’s cameo as himself in the film. “It was so much fun,” she said of the scene, in which Usher pops a bottle of champagne. “It was towards the end of the shoot and it was like, again, in that really big time when they were all making money and life was glamorous and sexy before everything gets really dark.”

Lopez added that the scene was not choreographed. “It was like, ‘Get up. Usher’s coming into the club. Go, act,'” she said. “Everybody just kind of went crazy. It was exactly like that. We were like, ‘Oh, shit, Usher’s here.'”

Usher was “very comfortable” in the scene, which also included him throwing money at the dancers. “He knew exactly what to do,” she said. “He was like, ‘These ain’t ones, these are hundreds.”‘

Lopez also shared that she was surprised when Alex Rodriguez proposed to her in March.

“I didn’t know anything,” she said. “We had talked about it a little bit, but I had no idea.”

She added that Rodriguez was nervous for the proposal and “he had rehearsals and stuff with his assistant and the housekeeper.”

Lopez was completely surprised by the proposal and revealed that nothing tipped her off that they were about to become engaged. “We went on a little beach vacation for a weekend. He was like, ‘You should go away before you start to tour, before you start everything. We have a big year ahead and just me and you, without the kids,'” she said. “And we went away for the weekend and we were walking on the beach. It was just like nothing.”

“I thought he was just trying to be romantic,” she continued. “He set up us eating outside by ourselves and then all of a sudden he’s like, ‘Let’s go over by the fire.'”

Once they made it to the fire, Rodriguez asked Lopez, “When did you know that I was crazy?” She added that he was nervous and didn’t know what to say. “I said, ‘Pretty much the whole time. I know you’re crazy,'” she responded. “I said, ‘But I know what I’m signing up for.’ And he just goes down on one knee and I was like, ‘What are you doing?'”

She added that they “were so happy” following the proposal. “We knew, I guess, eventually we were gonna get there,” she said. “It was awesome.”

Lopez also joined host Jimmy Fallon in a segment about the history of music video dancing. Dressed in matching black tops, grey pants and flannel shirts tied around their waists, the two performed dance numbers from music videos including “U Can’t Touch This,” “Straight Up,” “Walk Like An Egyptian,” “The Right Stuff” and more.