In the aired segment, Goodspeed is shown displaying her gallery of Paula Abdul drawings, her obsession portrayed as a charming idiocy. In her audition, Goodspeed sang a predictably horrible version of “Proud Mary” before being shown the door, her dreams dismantled, following three “no” votes, including one from an uncharacteristically subdued Abdul.
And now, two years later, Paula Goodspeed lay dead at the foot of Paula’s driveway.
The news disrupted the filming of Hollywood Week. As friends rushed to comfort a very freaked-out Abdul, the production went into its all-too-familiar crisis control posture. Statements of sympathy were issued to the press as well as blanket denials that the show could have in any way anticipated such tragic behavior on the part of an auditionee. All knew, however, that this was not some singer’s bikini pics showing up on the Web; the media firestorm over this one was going to take more than a news cycle or two to blow itself out.
“Paula Abdul Fan Who Was Mocked in American Idol Audition Commits Suicide” ran the headline in the Times of London. “Did American Idol Play a Part in Former Contestant’s Death?” was how it was played on no less than Fox News.
Executive Producer Ken Warwick, now solo at the show’s helm, appeared before the press to assure the world that the show would never put a “dangerous person” in front of the judges, and that psychological examinations were conducted on all potentially problematic contestants.
After absorbing a few strong cycles of nightmarish publicity, the media storm was on the brink of blowing itself out when Paula Abdul herself finally spoke up.
After initially hunkering down and avoiding the press, Abdul emerged and made a lunge straight off the reservation. In an interview on The View she told her unedited side of the story—how she begged producers not to let Goodspeed on the show, how fearful she was and astounded that they would do that to her.
This was a PR disaster of the highest magnitude, eclipsing the Corey Clark flame-up and the Jason Castro mistake.
Within days, Abdul was reminded of how the show had stood by her through her many scandals, of how the show had supported her. She pulled herself together and fell into line. Appearing on the David Letterman show a few weeks later, when Letterman prodded Abdul to “sue these baboons”—that is, the producers who had exposed her to that threat of a stalker—a contrite Abdul became notably uncomfortable, stammering and refusing to take the bait, before finally saying only “you’re going to get me in trouble” and “I’m lucky we were filming Hollywood Week when it happened.”
Abdul’s contract was up at the end of this season, and after stewing about it all summer long, she had decided, insane as the idea sounded, that unless things changed, she would walk away from American Idol.
For too long, Abdul had felt like American Idol’s poor stepcousin. Now, she determined, that had to change. When explaining her resolve to at last stand up for herself, Abdul would tell a hard-to-believe story of flying with the rest of the crew to an audition city. At the airport, when the group learned that there weren’t enough first-class seats for the entire A-list, Simon, Randy, Ryan, and Nigel and Ken, the executive producers, were naturally placed up front, while Abdul was sent to the back of the plane, directly, as she told it, next to the bathrooms. With a mind given to obsessing over the little things and a mountainous insecurity complex that had remained intact all through a music career during which she had sold 54 million albums, Abdul clung to the memories of these petty insults, reliving them over and over in her mind until they became the meaning of her Idol existence.
Then there was the money, which in its way was really about respect. But the money questions are also very much about money. Eight seasons in on the entertainment Goliath, the paycheck of one of its stars remained a paltry $1.9 million a year. Not bad by any real-world standards, but by network TV scale, a pittance. It had been a hard enough figure to swallow, but when, the previous year, Nigel Lythgoe had let it slip that Simon Cowell earned $39 million, Paula reached her breaking point.
As if all this were not enough, she had an even bigger concern than whether she wanted to come back to Idol—did Idol want her to come back?
After the Castro incident, the producers were asking if Paula was more trouble than she was worth. And there was another element that shaded that question in a different light: Suddenly there were new faces at the table asking the question. In addition to Lythgoe’s departure, there had been a change of the guard at Fox, with Peter Rice, the suave British head of the corporation’s indie film arm, stepping in as head of the network. When these discussions had come up in the past, there was always a sense that whatever massive amounts of hand-holding were required in the Paula sphere, what she brought to the show was irreplaceable. The Paula/Simon/Randy buddy act was one of the historic relationships in television, and it was to be preserved at all costs. The phrase “lightning in a bottle” is commonly used by television professionals to describe on-screen chemistry, something that can’t be manufactured, is very hard to capture, and something that once you’ve got it, you never ever let it go.
But with a new guard on board and the thought that Idol was due for a shake-up, that iron law was being questioned. Maybe it was time to revisit this whole judges thing.
As much as Paula was on the producers’ minds, they were more concerned with the five-hundred-pound gorilla in the room—the looming specter of losing Simon Cowell. In their minds, they had gamed out different scenarios for a Cowell succession—various replacements or reconfigurations of the panel—and they all came down to one thing: Tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars each season rode on keeping Cowell with the show.
In the summer of 2008, as preparations were being made for season 8, a new contract was placed at Cowell’s feet. It was the mother of all contracts, enough money to make Oprah look like a pauper. The executives took into account every possible cent Cowell could make if he left Idol—from bringing X Factor to America to appearing on other shows—added them all together, and came up with a number far, far bigger than that sum. They wanted to make sure there was no possible way Cowell could feel that leaving Idol made any financial sense for him. The amount, at that time, was said to be in the range of $100 million a year or $2.5 million an episode. Not bad for three hours of work a week.
His reaction: We’ll see.
So the tinkering began. Iconic though it was, by season 8, the three-judge combination, with its familiar nice-to-mean spectrum, was so widely imitated that it was hard to remember that Idol had, in fact, been the show to popularize it, if not create it. Eight years later, the three-judge spectrum seemed integral to the fabric of the Idol universe. But now the show that had invented the panel was about to take it apart.
Kara DioGuardi had always wanted to be a star. Growing up in New Rochelle, the daughter of a U.S. congressman, young Kara, like so many Idol contestants, sang around the house and at local stages as soon as she could speak. In videos of Kara as early as her tweens, her father can be seen egging on his gawky reluctant daughter, who magically comes to life once she begins belting out “Hello, Dolly!” for a family dinner. Coming to Los Angeles after college, she attempted to break into the industry as a performer herself, but instead became fabulously successful as a writer of other people’s songs, churning out a string of hits for Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Ricky Martin, Natasha Bedingfield, and Kelly Clarkson herself.
Working with the latter and with other Idol alums, Kara came to the attention of the show, and when the time came to return once again to the dream of a fourth judge, her name was quickly mentioned. She was younger than the rest of the panel, attractive and opinionated, and she also had a track record of producing hit records. And with a hint of feistiness, she seemed the woman who could stand up to Simon Cowell. On many levels, Kara seemed the perfect mix of ingredients to spice up the series. For her part, when approached about joining the biggest show on the planet, it was as though the dream of stardom, long since shelved, had suddenly been brough
t back to life. It didn’t take her long to think the offer over.
If the addition of Kara DioGuardi wasn’t actually calculated to make Paula’s stomach lurch, it certainly didn’t help. With her contract renewal looming, she could not help but notice the fact the producers had added not just another judge, but another female judge. And if she didn’t get the message on her own, the media was there to point it out for her. “Idol Judges Abdul Unreliable, Takes Out ‘Insurance’ ” was the Arizona Republic’s headline on Kara’s hiring.
When the decision to add DioGuardi was abruptly announced, a stunned Abdul didn’t wait long to make her feelings known. She mentioned during a radio interview that she was “concerned about the audience and acceptance,” noting that previous attempts at having a fourth guest judge had not been successful.
Watching now from the sidelines, Lythgoe made his feelings about the changes clear. “I don’t like fourth judges. I think once you’ve been told ‘You suck,’ you don’t need to be told another three times,” he said to the New York Post.
For DioGuardi, these statements were just the beginning of the season-long hazing coming her way. As preseason shooting began, Kara was thrust into the middle of the most famous panel in entertainment with little more than a pat on the back to guide her. In the audition episodes, Kara seemed not to know whether she was to be another mean judge or a nice judge. Sometimes she took Paula’s side, as if attempting to bond against the boys; at other times she came off as brutally shrill. Her most memorable moment of the audition tour was in her harsh dismissal of Katrina “Bikini Girl” Darrell, which degenerated into an out-and-out catfight. Particularly noted by critics was her sarcastic employment of the term “sweetie,” which gave many the chills.
But the new panel was just the beginning of the season’s problems. The audition weeks were largely seen to have been a wash—delivering few “star is born” moments, or any of the particularly memorable “freak” contestants to achieve breakout anti-stardom. Following the Goodspeed suicide, Idol showcased their deluded contestants with a far gentler hand than in years past.
The show then devoted two weeks of airtime to the drama-rich Hollywood Week segment of the competition. But after the bland auditions, this seemed to swing too far to the other extreme: turning every last snit into an epic drama, and giving the lion’s share of airtime to contestants such as the aforementioned “Bikini Girl,” chosen for her shameless antics and ability to stir up anger among her fellow contestants rather than any particular performing skills. Even at two weeks, the season’s best singers hardly made it onto the screen during the Hollywood episodes. And thus, five weeks in, viewers were left feeling the competition still had not begun and that—the most unpardonable of sins—the show had given them no one to root for.
But whatever demon possessed season 8 was just getting warmed up. The green mile episode became the stage for yet another semipublic debacle. Since the show had first introduced a perky, raven-haired singer named Joanna Pacitti, the cries of “Ringer!” had once again sounded across the Internet. During her audition, the show had taken a “cards on the table” approach to revealing her recording past, remembering how it had been accused of covering up Carly Smithson’s. Telling of the album she had recorded at age twenty-one and the heartbreak she had felt when it had failed to take off, the show tried to paint hers as a redemption story. This tactic, however, only seemed to bait the Internet catcalls, spurring on the amateur detective corps. It was soon revealed online that not only was Pacitti a former recording artist, but one with deep ties to Idol itself. Internet reports also claimed, and were rapidly repeated in the mainstream media, that Pacitti was housemates with 19 executives Roger Widynowski and Michelle Young, a fact that, if true, would be in clear violation of Idol rules stating that all relationships with the show’s staff be disclosed.
The truth, however, was far less nefarious and it would be the first of many stories the press would get very wrong that season. Pacitti had not been housemates with Widynowski, but merely lived in the same gigantic West Hollywood apartment complex as he. She later described Widynowski as a friendly face she knew only as “Roger” who worked somewhere in the music industry. “We’d see each other in the elevator. ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ He’s a really, really funny guy. I adore him. He’s unbelievable. He makes you smile and makes you laugh and he would sing my songs and make up really funny lyrics. So that was our relationship.”
Michelle Young had briefly been Pacitti’s manager years before, but they had not spoken in over a year. Pacitti knew that, long before, Young had once been an intern at 19, but says she had no clue that that was still active or what she might be doing there.
Pacitti would not get to tell her side of the story, however. On the night the green mile episode aired, Joanna and her two new BFFs, Alexis Grace and Adam Lambert (they called themselves “The Smoky Eye Club”), were celebrating their admission to the hallowed ranks of Idol semifinalists when Pacitti was summoned to Warwick’s office. Briefly and with little explanation, he told her that “for the good of the show” they had decided she was being removed from the competition. She was asked if she wanted a ride home, shook her head no, and stunned, drove herself back to her boyfriend’s house.
“I had just finished my interview packages for my performance, for my solo performance. They reassured me that, like, ‘Your piece tonight was great. It’s going to be good for you. You can really take advantage of the press that you’re going to get from this.’ ”
For viewers who had seen Pacitti celebrating on Thursday night’s pretaped episode, it was a shock to wake up and read she had been eliminated via an official statement that offered no explanation other than stating the rumor. In the past, Idol had always addressed its issues publicly, with humor and sympathy. But this time, there was nothing. It felt to some as though the show was somehow losing its rudder.
And then came the semifinal rounds.
After a nearly two-month preseason, fans were ready for the singing competition to get down to the business. However, thanks to yet another format change, that was exactly what they were denied.
In a preseason interview, Mike Darnell said that the biggest challenge for Idol was keeping it fresh, keeping people interested in a show that was at an age when most pulled up the stakes and called it a day. To that end, Idol dramatically shuffled the deck on the format, throwing in a host of rules and tweaks. Some of these changes—such as the Save Rule borrowed from French Idol—were to prove brilliantly successful, increasing the dramatic tension, highlighting, not undermining the basic narrative thread.
In the semifinals, however, the changes, the tweaks, and the attempts to spice things up only underscored the alienation viewers felt from the contestants. The show reverted back to the original semifinals format, the three heats plus Wild Card version. The semifinals formula of recent years had its problems, not least of which was that the stately progress of calling the field often put the audiences to sleep. But with this change months in, the audience still hadn’t spent enough time with any one singer to develop a connection. Worse still, slow though the original format had been, the sudden wiping out of all but three of the contenders each night felt brutal and uncaring in what ultimately was considered a nurturing family show. Original format though it had been, years later, it felt gimmicky.
If the previous seasons had reacted against the Sanjayas, this season had a surplus of them in the early weeks, including the borderline-unhinged pageant queen Tatiana Del Toro and the first contestant to openly, flagrantly satirize Idol in all its years, the brilliantly funny Nick Mitchell (aka Norman Gentle), who got on his knees during his semifinals performance to sing a song of worship to Idol itself.
However, the changes showed one thing, the boldness of the Idol team. With most long-running TV success stories, from Law & Order to The Tonight Show, the edict is once you’ve got a hit, you don’t move a single hair on the star’s head. The show’s bible remains sacrosanct until well after
the novelty has worn off and the audience slide is unstoppable, by which point the changes made are transparently desperate and ill-considered.
As a result of the changes and chaos swirling around the show, by the time Idol at last lurched onto its big stage, the press smelled blood and with the ratings for the first time significantly off year after year, a new genre of stories appeared in the media as reporters fell over themselves to proclaim every problem, every off night, the beginning of the end for the Goliath. “American Idol’s Ratings Slide: Speed Bump or Bad Road Ahead?” asked the Los Angeles Times. “Idol Juggernaut Shows Signs of Slowing” was UPI’s headline. Throughout all its trials, Idol’s absolute dominance over the airwaves had never in eight years once been questioned.
However, despite the issues, a funny thing happened on the way to the apocalypse. From the crazy process emerged perhaps the most talented group ever to step on the Idol stage—a group to rival the fabled fifth season cast. In the long run up, they had struggled to bond with the audience, but season 8’s group was filled with such a high level of accomplishment that the entire season hardly saw a single belly-flop performance, something that was generally an Idol guarantee on any given night. To a singer, it was a truly capable, deeply likable group, and for the next months, whatever wackiness Idol went through production-wise, on pure talent alone this group would hold up the Idol season, led ultimately by perhaps the greatest phenomenon of a performer ever to step on the Idol stage, and ultimately won by a young man who in his quiet way captured the very best of the Idol spirit.
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