Is America ready for the return of Simon Cowell as a judge on a TV talent show? Cowell is more than ready. Hes been planning for the launch of American version of The X Factor long before it was announced in 2010 that he was leaving American Idol as a judge to be an executive producer/judge of The X Factor U.S.
Fox will televise a two-part premiere of The X Factor U.S. on September 21 and September 22, 2011. The shows four judges are Cowell, Paula Abdul (another former American Idol judge), Epic Records chairman/CEO Antonio L.A. Reid and former Pussycat Dolls lead singer Nicole Scherzinger . British TV personality Steve Jones is the host of The X Factor U.S.
On September 13, 2011 the day before The X Factor U.S. held a gala premiere in Los Angeles Cowell spoke to journalists via a telephone conference call. (The journalists on the call were told by a publicist before the interview began that no personal questions were allowed.) Famous for being outspoken, Cowell did not hold back in his opinions of his fellow "X Factor" judges and some of The X Factor competition (namely, American Idol and The Voice ). He also revealed how the exit of fired X Factor U.S. judge Cheryl Cole (who was replaced by Scherzinger) will be handled on the show, as well as what really happened the day he had a temper tantrum that was shown in an X Factor U.S. sneak preview.
Some former American Idol contestants have auditioned for The X Factor U.S. Is that something youd consider having: people whove been on other reality shows? And will we have any these people be funny, like Jedward and Wagner Carrilho from The X Factor U.K.?
Yes. Im glad you asked that, and I think it comes back to our point about having as few rules as possible; I mean that was the whole idea in the show in the first place. And we did expect some people who weve seen before on Idol to come along, so I didnt really have a problem with that. None of them did particularly well. It was quite nice to hear them a second time.
And with regards, for people who dont know who Wagner is or Jedward, they were what I consider kind of joke contestants who got through to the final of The X Factor in the U.K. because one particular judge liked them. It comes down to the individual judges decisions, because in the later stages of the show you make decisions whos going to make the finals depending on what category youre given. And already there have been one or two questionable decisions by a couple of the judges, but thats down to them.
Do you think American Idol is going to finally win the Emmy Award for outstanding reality-competition program this year? And if it does, would you find it any way ironic and/or threatening?
Well, I find it very amusing that after all these years that the year I wasnt on it, it would win the Emmy, and I think that would make me laugh so it probably will. With regard to threatening, no, I dont see it as threatening; I think it would be more ironic. But I think Im going to say if it does win this year its for all the years we did before, so whatever happens Im going to claim the victory, I promise you, and replicate the Emmy and just put my name on it.
Can you tell about some of the standout contestants so far on The X Factor U.S.?
I wont say all the interesting ones; we have promoted a few. Weve held back a lot for the first show and what were going to show [at the world-premiere event of The X Factor U.S.], in terms of what I would call different types of contestants to what youve seen before; very, very different back stories, the kind of stories I dont think other shows would put on but we are. And I think youll hopefully enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it when you watch it back. Its quite edgy, its very raw, its real life, but its a talent show, so the ones we thought were talented we put on the show, but they are different to what youve seen before.
How are you feeling at this point? Are you excited? Scared? What are you thinking?
Im feeling excited now. I mean, there are always nerves before a launch, but its good nerves. We always do this every time we make a show. We will edit the show, guaranteed, finish editing it hours before transmission because well be making changes.
But my friends and the people who have seen the show theyve got excited about it, and Im hoping that obviously America feels the same way, too. But no, Im really starting to have a good time now. And Im looking forward to [the world-premiere event of The X Factor U.S.], because Ive always wanted to do this, which is to have kind of like a, not a film premier, a TV premier in a cinema. Its brilliant.
A lot of times on singing competitions like Idol and The Voice, weve seen people get really excited about sort of radical reinventions of songs, like Adam Lambert doing Johnny Cashs Ring of Fire with guitar, or Kris Allen reinventing Kanye Wests Heartless. Are you going to be pushing contestants to do that?
Oh 100 percent. We want as many unique versions as possible; otherwise you just turn it into a karaoke competition. So within about three weeks into the show youre going to start hearing contestants way outside their comfort zone and hearing versions of songs you havent heard before.
Part of the reason for doing that, as I said, is that you dont want it to be like a bad sound alike, and secondly, were going to sell downloads on iTunes so you have to come up with unique versions. And thats part of the test of the contestants within the show, who can come up with the most unique version of the song; otherwise, its just boring.
Are there certain songs that you think should be outright banned from the competition because you dont want to ever hear that song again?
Yes. I Believe I Could Fly is pretty high up there. At Last I think Im now allergic to that song, and everybody seems to think Unchained Melody is my favorite song of all time. I think somebody said that as a joke, because its not, and I cant hear that anymore. And Jason Mraz that hit he had a few years ago I cannot listen to that anymore. As soon as they start & Oh, and Ill tell you one, Ordinary People by John Legend.
Really?
Yes, because they always try and sing it like that version and its never as good, and I have to stop it now after about five seconds.
In reuniting with Paula Abdul as a talent-show judge, is it that old feeling again, or is there anything different?
Well, what was interesting is that Paula can be a bit wacky at times, but Nicole actually wasnt far behind in a fantastically self-centered way, which she wasnt aware of, which I found really amusing. There was another part of the auditions where every city we went to, and again Nicole wasnt aware of this, she changed her accent. When she was in New York, she had this kind of Brooklyn thing going on. And then when she went to Dallas she became this Southern belle. I mean she just changes every city you go into.
And with Paula, the great thing about working with her is within about five minutes of filming shes not aware that the cameras are on anymore and shell fight with you over something, over something sometimes important, often not. And thats what I like about her. She is prepared to argue. So its like getting an old dog back from the rescue pound. Its kind of grateful to see you and the relationship is back in tact.
How important are the back stories that the contestants are going to share to the success of making The X Factor U.S. a successful television show?
Personally, I think theyre crucial, because I get to meet the contestants for the first time when they audition and we have no background information on them at all, which I dont want to know. And if theyre interesting to me when Im asking them questions then I think theyre going to be interesting to people who watch the show. Normally when I ask them whats the most interesting thing thats happened in your life and they start droning on about singing at the age of 3 or 4, Im honestly not interested.
I expect all of them to say that they wanted to be a singer. Thats obvious. I really am interested in their back stories. If they got divorced, why did they get divorced? If theyre married, are they happy being married? If theyve left college, how do their parents feel about them leaving college to pursue a music career? So really obviously number one on the list is talent, but number two is you really, really have to be an interesting person and have a very good back story.
Now that you have Paula Abdul back, do you any interest in bringing Randy Jackson in for a little bit of an American Idol original line up reunion?
Well, I miss Randy, because he really is a good friend. Maybe well just get him a couple of front row seats every week and he can just do his dog-barking thing. No, but seriously though, I really do miss him, but hes happy on Idol.
I think L.A. [Reid], who we brought in, has been genuinely a revelation, because hes one of the most competitive people Ive ever worked with in my life, so it was a different challenge for me. So Im going to miss Randy as a person, but we hang out all the time. Im probably going to meet up with him this week for dinner, so its all good.
What do you think will make the American public connect with "The X Factor"?
I think it goes back to the point someone made earlier on about the back stories: how interesting are the contestants, can you be bothered to invest time in them, are they good, is it different from what youve heard before. And I was very aware of that when we made the show because of the obvious comparisons to other shows out there. And I always said to people I think when you watch the show youre going to understand that theres more than a subtle difference between the two.
So its a combination of it has to be raw, you have to allow the viewers to see things they havent seen before, you have to like or hate the contestants, and they have to be brilliant every week. And if you dont have any of that people will switch off. I would switch off if it didnt have that.
From like a production standpoint, how is doing the American version of The X Factor been different so far from the British version?
Its a good question, because when we first did this it was kind of weird for me because we do these auditions in front of crowds 4,000 people, 5,000 people, 6,000 people in arenas, and of course nobody had seen the show before. And in a strange way, it made it more interesting, because the audience didnt know what to expect. I could feel that they were kind of excited and a bit edgy, and then they got it quite quickly.
I would say the American audiences are more vocal, that when they like someone they let you know, and they certainly let you know when they disagree with you. There were a few occasions where we had to otherwise I think I may have got seriously injured bring back some contestants we said no to because the audience wanted them through, because we did say to them youre sort of like the fifth judge here.
So it was fun and everywhere we went the crowds were good. Better in the evenings, because you could feel a lot of them were drunk so they were louder, and I like that. I might do that for the live shows, just make everybody drink before they come in.
What is the most important thing that youve learned during your time as a judge on American Idol that youve now been applying for launching The X Factor ?
You have to say what you think, basically; otherwise, anyone could do this job. Everyone has an opinion, you like somebody, you dont like somebody. Not many people are prepared to actually say I think what other people are thinking at home, and I genuinely dont have a problem with that.
And the more time I spent in America the best compliment you could have is when people come up to you and say, You do say what Im thinking. So I felt comfortable doing that when I moved from Idol onto The X Factor. It doesnt always make you comfortable when you watch it back, but it definitely makes the show more honest I think.
The Voice jumped in and did something similar to the mentoring process on The X Factor. What are your feelings about that?
They didnt do it as well as us, if Im being honest with you. And you will genuinely see the difference, I think, on this show. I kind of expected them to do something like that, but thats the nature of the game when you make reality shows.
But it is a necessary part of the format that you really do mentor these contestants. And look, its not just what you do during the show. Anyone can mentor. The point is can you mentor someone through the show and actually create a star. So youre going to have to judge X Factor on what we do compared to what they did on The Voice.
As Im talking to you, this week an artist I mentored on "X Factor" last year in the U.K. they didnt win; they came third but theyre going to have the biggest-selling single this year and the biggest-selling album. Theyre a band called One Direction. So thats what I call proper mentoring where youre preparing somebody for the real world.
How early will the mentoring start?
It starts the second youre given your category, when you find out who you have; you have the young guys, you have the young girls, you have the over 30-year-olds, and you have the groups And depending on what category you have, you work with them all the way through until the end of the show.
Former X Factor U.S. judge Cheryl Cole was shown briefly at the judges table in the trailer. How youre going to handle that situation? Is she going to be edited out completely? Is her exit from the show going to be addressed at all?
No. No. Shes in episode one. Shes in the first hour. So in terms of how we address it I think we just pretty much tell it as it was. She was on the show and then she got replaced by Nicole. So on the first half of the show next week, its Cheryl and then the second half its Nicole.
Youve mentioned several times about hating shows and things that are predictable. In what ways will The X Factor be unpredictable?
Gosh, well its just the fact, I suppose, that when you make a reality show good things happen and bad things happen. I think one of the things we showed in that eight-minute promo was me having a sort of a childish meltdown because I hated what everybody was doing on this particular day. But we do actually show the process, but its not always happy, sunny days when you make these shows, that things go wrong, bad things happen backstage, people have major tantrums, including the judges and the contestants. They go mad at you, and that you have to show all that. You have to show the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Can you talk about some of the challenges you had to overcome in bringing The X Factor to America in order to make it work effectively as compared to Britain?
I think the first challenge was, if Im being honest with you, I think the network initially would have been happier that we all stayed on Idol for the rest of our lives and there wouldnt be another show. The problem with that was is that the show was becoming more and more popular around the world and inevitably somebody would have come along and done something really, really close to this show.
And once we explained this to Fox they accepted the fact that its going to have to go on the air. And I mean they didnt have to be sort of dragged and screaming to it in the end, but these are expensive shows to produce but because we had a really good couple of years the last two years in the U.K. I think it sort of speeded the process up and then they got really into it.
And then the other challenges, of course, are trying to make your mind up who should be judging it, who should be hosting it; lots of things went wrong along the way. And that goes back to the previous caller, bad things happen when you make reality shows and it does become very public, but you just have to deal with it.
You had a childish meltdown? How did that go?
Well, it was during one of the boot camp shows, and I think we had about 100 contestants, like 110 or something, and they had an overnight challenge with a list of songs to just literally on piano or guitar do a kind of a stripped down version. And for some reason a load of programmers were brought in that night, and they all started coming up with weird, what they thought were creative, versions of these songs.
They sounded absolutely dreadful and were getting worse and worse and worse, and everybody sounded rubbish and we had a live audience in and they knew it was rubbish. It was just one of those very, very uncomfortable days. And the whole thing was filmed, and then the producers thought it would be amusing to include it in the show. And I actually, when I watched it back, although it was a bit embarrassing I thought, Yes, why not keep it in?
Were you crying?
Crying? No. But there was a lot of crying. I think the following day it was like I remember thinking its kind of 11/3 Nicole/Paula on the crying stakes. Paula was quite a long ways behind Nicole amazingly, and then literally on the final two days called it all back, and then theyre even Stevens.
Given the current climate of the music industry and the fact that there are so many talent shows on TV now, do you think a show like The X Factor can produce a megastar, like a Lady Gaga or a Justin Bieber, right out of the gate?
A hundred percent yes. And like I was saying earlier on, what Ive seen with the show in the last couple of years in the U.K. with the kind of artists weve attracted the artists coming through are not just competing, they are murdering the opposition in the U.K. at the moment. And we hope to do the same thing with the show here
That was always the sole reason for making a show like this, can you find a different kind of artist who doesnt just work within a competition show, because were always going to have a winner, but actually can compete with the big artists out there around the world. And thats what you hope is going to happen, and I will die trying until the end to do that.
Weve seen on some of the other reality talent competitions that the winning contestant doesnt always go on to have the most successful music career. And sometimes the runner up is actually way more successful than the winner. Why do you think that is?
I think it goes back partly to what we were talking about earlier on about the mentoring process, and it was a huge reason why in the U.K. I left Idol and started X Factor, because I used to get frustrated that we as people who work in the music business werent allowed to do anything with the contestants on a week-by-week basis and they would make these awful decisions. And I do think that if you have the right artist and they have the right person working with them you can start to demonstrate on the show each week the kind of record youd be releasing after you hopefully won the competition.
And thats why I think some of these contestants havent done well, because they win because of popularity, not because of having a unique talent theyve demonstrated on a week-by-week basis. And thats why you have to update the process. You have to do something different and you have to take risks. So well wait and see and see what happens.
For more info: "The X Factor" U.S. website
RELATED LINKS ON EXAMINER.COM:
Interview with Simon Cowell for "American Idol"
Interview with Simon Cowell for "The X Factor" U.S., February 2011
Interview with Simon Cowell for "The X Factor" U.S., April 2011
Interview with Simon Cowell for "The X Factor" U.S., June 2011
Interview with Paula Abdul for "The X Factor" U.S., June 2011
Interview with L.A. Reid for "The X Factor" U.S., June 2011
Interview with Nicole Scherzinger for "The X Factor" U.S., June 2011
"The X Factor" news and reviews
