The New York Post pulled out excerpts from the book, which hits stands on Feb. 25, noting Perez’s recollection of her days on In Living Color with Lopez.
The two met in 1991 during the open casting call for the show’s Fly Girl dancers. Perez was the show’s famed Fly Girl choreographer and claims that she was the one who convinced host and creator Keenan Ivory Wayans to pick Lopez.
Though the American Idol judge has credited Wayans with discovering her, Perez claims he thought she was “chubby and corny” and that she, in fact, was the one to encourage the hire.
But in a 2010 VH1′s Behind the Music episode about JLo, Wayans claimed to have known about Lopez’s star potential from the start.
“I’d been there hours and seen every dancer in New York, and then this young girl steps up and a spotlight landed on her and she captivated everyone in the room,” Wayans recalled in the episode.
“He just saw something in me,” Lopez confirmed. “He would always tell me, ‘You’re going to be a big star.’”
Making her debut in September 1991, the future pop diva didn’t immediately connect with her fellow dancers.
“All of the girls were coming into my office complaining how she was manipulating wardrobe, makeup, and me, all to her advantage,” Perez wrote in her memoir, saying Lopez thought the girls were just “jealous.”
She then went on to say that the Grammy winner dropped her “sweet girl act” and “went off” on Perez like “some ghetto biatch, screaming and pounding her chest.”
Perez claims Lopez shouted, “You pick on me, me and only me, every f**king day! Every f**king day! I work my ass off, deliver and you keep pushing me aside, treating me like s**t! I know I’m good! I’m better than any of these girls, and you know it.”
And though the singer left the show after two seasons to pursue her acting career, Perez claims she continued to make “disparaging comments” about her in Hollywood. After being hurt by the alleged comments, Perez was surprised when Lopez was friendly to her at a night club years later.
“Jennifer came over to me, smiling, saying hello as if nothing had happened. I should’ve let it go, played it off, too. Instead, I killed her with my biting tongue,” Perez writes without elaborating.
