Access Hollywood had a chance to caught up with Nick Cannon earlier this morning and the first question was regarding his thoughts on Mariah and Nicki’s verbal altercation. As a supportive husband, Nick took Mariah’s side, saying:

“I feel like it’s taking away from the quality of what ‘Idol’ is all about. This is about people accomplishing their dreams, experts guiding these young people to do what they’ve done.
My wife is the strongest and classiest woman that I’ve ever met, if you watch the video, she just maintains her composure. I don’t think she’s moved by the theatrics and pageantry of it all. She signed up to do a job to help young people accomplish their dreams and this is like a sidebar. I hope that’s not what this show becomes.. about the cat fights. Let’s get back to what the core of the show is about.”

In the meantime, Ryan Seacrest had few things to say about it too today, although, he sounded concerned about rating more than anything else.

“These are all very different individuals with different perspectives and different opinions that provide for interesting conversation and dialogue and feedback for the contestants,”said Ryan who was in the room during the altercation. “[There's] nothing wrong with disagreeing . . . That’s gonna happen, and it’s okay. It got heated between Nicki and Mariah. It was intense! I’ll be honest with you . .. It went far last night. It did get intense. We want that! We want them to be on this panel together. This is a good team, a great team, to go out and look for the next American Idol . . . the feedback that they give is very good.”

Check out the interview with Nick below.