Jennifer Lopez reveals why she wanted Cardi B to star in 'Hustlers'

Actor-singer Jennifer Lopez recently revealed why she persuaded rapper Cardi B to star alongside her in the upcoming film 'Hustlers'.

Lopez visited the American talk show 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon' and shared why she convinced the rapper to feature in the film, reported The Hollywood Reporter.

The 50-year-old actor revealed that she called the rapper, who used to work as an exotic dancer because she was struggling to master pole dance for the movie.

"I was like, 'You have to be in this movie. You know this world. You could teach us,'" Lopez 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'," she added.

"I was like, 'Well, then you have to be in the movie' and she was like, 'Absolutely,'" Lopez revealed.

Lopez stated that while the film is Cardi B's first time as an actor, the rapper didn't need any advice and was a "natural" at it.

"She's such a natural at what she does," the actor said.

Lopez noted that it came easy for her and she "knew exactly what to do."

"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, 'Okay.' She knew exactly what to do," she said.

The actor later spoke about singer 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," she added.

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

Usher was "very comfortable" in the scene, which also included him throwing money at the strippers.

"He knew exactly what to do. He was like, 'These ain't ones, these are hundreds'," she said.

Lopez also joined host Jimmy Fallon in a segment of the show about the history of music video dancing.

In 'Hustlers', the 50-year-old superstar plays Ramona, the leader of a group of strippers in a Robin Hood-esque scheme to scam wealthy men, when the sex industry bottoms out during the financial crisis of the late 2000s. The film also stars Constance Wu, Julia Stiles, Lizzo, Cardi B, Lili Reinhart, and Keke Palmer as the group of strippers.

The film is inspired by a true story detailed in a New York Magazine article titled 'The Hustlers at Scores', which was first published in December 2015. The movie is slated to hit the theatres on September 13.