Oops! Julianne Hough received an accidental wake-up call during Paula Abdul’s 2019 Billboard Music Awards performance on Wednesday, May 1, when the Dancing With the Stars alum took a prop to the face.
While the former American Idol judge, 56, began her high-energy production, she belted out a flawless rendition of her 1988 No. 1 hit “Straight Up,” but it was when she danced through the crowd that the blunder was caught on camera. Abdul flipped her top hat off during a dance move, but it was Hough’s neck that caught it.
The Safe Haven actress, 30, barely batted an eye, though, as she turned and smiled at the camera. However, after the incident, Hough headed backstage where she recovered with a makeshift neck brace. “The result of the honor of being hit in the neck by @PaulaAbdul’s flying hat! Love you, babe!!!” she captioned a picture on Twitter.
Abdul, for her part, retweeted the photo, writing, “OMG IM PEEING MY PANTS!!!!! You know it was with love.”
Ahead of her performance, Abdul opened up to E! News on the red carpet about what the night meant for her, and revealed that she was “doing it for her mom and dad.” (Her father passed away two weeks earlier.)
“For me, I think if you align yourself in that heart space what you love to do, then you’re on the right path. You have to be willing to make sharp left turns and sharp right turns … It’s hard to make it in this business,” Abdul said. “You can’t take things too seriously, and as I get older the more I’m in the moment, the more I appreciate everything that’s going on.”
The pop icon confirmed news of her dad’s death in a series of Twitter posts on April 17. “‘Dad: a daughters [sic] first love’ – Unknown,” she wrote. “Everyone loved my father. He had a heart of gold and carried his heart on his sleeve wherever he went, and shared it with everyone he came in contact with. Isn’t it a beautiful gift that I still feel his spirit with me?”
