Ryan Seacrest says Mariah Carey’s poor New Year’s Eve performance was unfortunate, but insists the disaster could have happened to anyone due to the nature of live TV.

The 46-year-old diva performed in New York’s Times Square as part of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve alongside the 42-year-old host. However, she was suddenly met with technical difficulties and eventually left the stage feeling upset.

In an attempt to clarify the situation, Ryan insists Dick Clark Productions would have never spoiled her performance on purpose.

He stated on his On Air with Ryan Seacrest radio show: “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, Ryan didn’t get to witness the performance as he had to run to another stage and lead the traditional New Year countdown.

He added: “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.”

He also defended Dick Clark Productions by saying: “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.”