Kelly Clarkson took a trip down memory lane and recalled the time she “got in trouble” on American Idol for not getting her glam done.
“They were like, ‘So we’re about to be on camera,’ and I was like, ‘I know,’” Clarkson, 41, said on the Monday, February 26, episode of the “Smartless” podcast. “And they were like, ‘But you’re going to be on camera,’ and I was like, ‘I know.’”
Clarkson explained that she would wear makeup for stage, but not when they were filming “behind-the-scenes” content.
“But one producer in particular, very high up, was not a fan of me just because I didn’t play that game,” she said. “And it wasn’t even playing a game. The other four girls that season were very into that stuff. They were very into it.”
Clarkson was crowned the winner of the first season of American Idol in 2002. The top 10 finalists included four other women, Nikki McKibbin, Tamyra Gray, Christina Christian and Ryan Starr, and the group toured together from October to November of that year.
The Kelly Clarkson Show host joked she was “the most amazing person to tour with” because she was “never in the makeup and hair chair,” saying, “They would have to force me to sit there.”
Clarkson explained that she’s “highly allergic” to anything that “gets near [her] eyes,” so she “doesn’t enjoy wearing it.” While noting she “loves the art” of makeup, she said it’s “not [her] thing.”
After winning the reality singing competition, Clarkson said things in her career were “bumpy from the beginning” because “nobody knew what to do” with her since she loved several genres of music.
“Everybody kinda had a different plan,” she said. “And nobody knew that it would be successful in their defense. They were like, ‘Yeah, this kid from this show.’ Like, I understand that. And I understood it then, by the way.”
Clarkson noted that she found out “around the top five” that the winner of American Idol would have to do a movie, which she “cried so hard” to get out of because she didn’t want to act. (The comedy musical, From Justin to Kelly, which also starred runner-up Justin Guarini, follows a college student from Pennsylvania and a waitress from Texas who meet during spring break in Florida.)
“I was so worried because my goal was to sing and tour and do stuff like that. I was so worried that it was going to ruin any chance of me being taken seriously as an artist,” she said.
Clarkson added that she “begged” her label to release her first single prior to the movie’s release, which she thinks “saved” her. (She dropped “A Moment Like This” two weeks after her American Idol win.)
Despite the rocky start, Clarkson went on to have a successful career, releasing 10 albums. She made her return to the reality singing competition world in 2018 when she became a coach on The Voice, but left the show in 2023 after nine seasons. She launched The Kelly Clarkson Show in 2019.
