Rest easy, America. Simon Cowell is not a heartless meanie! See? Even the children love him! In a FOX conference call today, executive producer Ken Warwick explained — and explained again … and again — that despite appearances in last night’s broadcast, the often blase judge did not (did you get that? DID NOT!) roll his eyes at a remark made by contestant Chris Richardson regarding this week’s tragedy at Virginia Tech University. “Simon didn’t hear him!” Warwick repeatedly exclaimed. Turns out, Simon was reacting to Richardson’s justification of his nasally performance as a conscious, recognizable singing style — a “style” that “Simon hates with a vengeance.” When Cowell learned of the unfortunate camera cut, the executive producer explained, “he was mortified after!”
Unlike some of Idol’s more eagle-eyed fans, Warwick missed the eye roll. “I was sitting next to the director, I’ve got the monitor in front of me,” he says. “And I didn’t even catch that he’d done an eye roll!”
The debacle will be addressed in tonight’s show, it seems, but not dwelled upon. Instead, the attention will focus on the all-important results and the show’s Idol Gives Back charity campaign. Explaining the campaign, Warwick said, “It’s something that’s done in Europe — this kind of charity entertainment show — which is mixed with music and comedy, and it’s very successful. The telethon way of doing these kind of shows is something a little bit that we don’t … we’ve moved on from there in Europe. So it was only a matter of time before it came over here.”
Yeah, um … we know that we’ve ripped off plenty of ideas from British TV, Ken (we haven’t forgotten The Office, Trading Spaces and of course, Idol), but do you have to rub it in?
