As America’s Acquired Expertise continues to air on the 2025 TV schedule, Simon Cowell stays a fan-favorite choose, providing loads of encouragement and compassion to contestants, along with his blunt critiques. He’s even known as out producers for being “very imply” to the Season 20 contestants. How the tables have turned! Again within the early days of American Idol, Cowell was recognized for his rudeness, and fellow OG choose Paula Abdul had a reasonably particular approach of coping with him.
Paula Abdul paid a go to to The Jennifer Hudson Present, reuniting with the EGOT winner years after J-Hud (shockingly) completed in seventh place on American Idol Season 3. The Dreamgirls actress advised the viewers that Abdul was undoubtedly the “good” choose again then, when she sat alongside Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson. Hudson stated she gave the contestants items and supplied encouragement, calling her the “softest” of the trio, to which Abdul replied:
Somebody needed to be. It wasn’t gonna be the man to the left of me.
Ah, Simon Cowell. He and Paula Abdul undoubtedly didn’t see eye to eye for a lot of the primary eight seasons, earlier than the “Straight Up” singer left American Idol. They went at one another on digicam and underneath the desk, apparently, as Abdul revealed:
I’d have spikes on my heels so I might kick him beneath the desk, I imply, sincere to God.
Jennifer Hudson agreed that in her expertise, Simon Cowell “wasn’t too good” again then, however he’s been a visitor on her discuss present — he was really her very first visitor again when The Jennifer Hudson Present premiered in 2022 — and she or he famous that he’s “so mellow” now.
Paula Abdul thinks that turning into a dad in 2014 modified him, however she certified that by saying:
Yeah he’s completely different. Not that completely different although. He’s snarky as at all times. No, significantly, and he nonetheless makes jokes each time I see him. He says, ‘Come right here, Paula! Come right here!’ like how I might say to my Chihuahua.
Whereas it’s type of amusing to think about Paula Abdul having that Chihuahua power on American Idol (it’s not an unfair comparability), Simon Cowell really treating her like a canine or calling to her by affecting a high-pitched voice and patting his lap is fairly obnoxious. I daresay he deserved these spikey kicks.
Simon Cowell left American Idol in 2010, one season after Paula Abdul did. He went on to host the American model of The X-Issue from 2011 till its cancellation in 2013, after which he landed on the present the place we will discover him at present — America’s Acquired Expertise.
American Idol has moved from Fox to ABC since Simon Cowell’s time however nonetheless stays on the air. The present has seen a little bit of a judging desk switch-up recently, with Katy Perry exiting after Season 22, and Carrie Underwood changing her as a choose 20 years after profitable Season 4. There’s no official phrase on who’s coming again for Season 24, however there are rumors that Underwood could also be leaving.
Nonetheless, don’t rely on seeing one explicit OG choose return to his stomping grounds: Simon Cowell has stated he would possible by no means return to American Idol. As a substitute you may catch him on AGT, which airs at 8 p.m. ET Tuesdays and Wednesdays on NBC.