Coming from famous families! Jim Carrey’s daughter, Aretha Franklin’s granddaughter and more celebrity kids have tried out for American Idol.
The comedian’s then-26-year-old, Jane, auditioned for the ABC show in 2012. While the waitress made it to Hollywood Week at the time, she was cut after performing “Looking Out My Back Door” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
“I freaked out when I was there, so I was really, really shaky,” Jane said in a confessional following her exit. “I know I can do way better than that so I’m really disappointed.”
The singer noted that she called her dad, calling the Ace Ventura star “kind of comforting.” She added, “He said, ‘I’ve been said no to a bunch of times,’ and it worked out for him, so hopefully I have a shot.”
A decade later, Franklin’s granddaughter Grace auditioned for American Idol at just 15 years old, singing both the Fugees “Killing Me Softly” and her late grandma’s “Ain’t No Way.”
When Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie voted for the teenagers not to proceed to the next round in February 2022, fellow judge Katy Perry walked off the stage. “I’m going to the bar,” the California native said at the time. “There’s something wrong with your ears.”
The “All Night Long” singer explained his controversial decision, saying, “You’re 15. You’ve got the family lineage. What we need to put now is time and some work in to get it up to par. The age and the voice has to all come together on the same path. … If you go and come back and put the shyness behind you and the voice in front of you, you’re going to be something amazing, and I don’t want to be the one to make you tip over and fall at this stage.”
Grace’s audition came three years after the Grammy winner’s death at age 76 from pancreatic cancer.
“It is with deep and profound sadness that we announce the passing of Aretha Louise Franklin, the Queen of Soul,” the Tennessee native’s family members wrote in an August 2018 statement. “In one of the darkest moments of our lives, we are not able to find the appropriate words to express the pain in our heart. We have lost the matriarch and rock of our family. The love she had for her children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and cousins knew no bounds.”
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Keep scrolling to see more stars with kids singing on the show, including the Doobie Brothers’ Tom Johnston.
