Neil Patrick Harris spoke with EW about guest judging American Idol in Dallas last week.
He swears the audition rounds aren’t fixed, and that coming up with a new vocabulary is pretty tough. Plus, Simon is intimidating! Read more HERE.
I’d still perfor performers who aren’t in the music industry mentor rather than judge, but NPH seems to have taken on the challenge with the right attitude:
ETA: NPH will be hosting the upcoming Emmy’s. He’s a big fan of So You Think You Can Dance and talked the Emmy producers into incorporating some dance into the show. SYTYCD’s lyrical hip-hoppers, Napoleon and Tabitha have been tapped to choreograph… Maybe we’ll see some former SYTYCD contestants performing, which would be awesome. It would almost make up for SYTYCD not being nominated in the Best Reality Series category….
Did you pick a role? Were you the stern-but-kind taskmaster? Were you snarky?
I was more than a little intimidated by Mr. Cowell. It’s his show, you know, so when you’re on that panel, I was wondering if it’s impolite to disagree with him, on a business level. He could wander over to the producer and whisper something and you’re suddenly gone and Joe Jonas is back. But I asked him, ‘Is it okay if I disagree with you?’ And he said, ‘Yes, do whatever you want. The one thing that you should know is that we’re totally winging it. We have no idea what’s going on. We have no idea what we’re doing here. We just judge the people as we see them.’ Which I kind of thought was a joke. In point of fact, it really isn’t. I thought there was a lot more shady dealing going on in there. I thought they would say, ‘This is one that we held for two years, this is a ringer, we want to keep him in, ‘ or, ‘Go to town on this one.’ There’s nothing going on. It’s exactly like it is. There’s the four of you on the table with the red Coca-Cola cups.
I feel like that goes away when you get on the panel for whatever reason, though, and you just start saying the same five words over and over again.
It’s hard when you’re up there to come up with different vocabulary. Nice. Good. Fantastic. I mean, you say those things over and over. They don’t have ghostwriters who come in. I think now that there’s only one girl on the panel, Kara’s taken on a more feminine role. She seems like a nicer and kinder Kara. But when someone sits outside for 11 hours in Dallas, Texas, to audition for American Idol, a show that they’ve seen, they know the beratement. They know the caustic judgment. And then they come out and they sing and they’re terrible. And they seriously think that they’re talented. They must be told that they’re terrible. They don’t need to be embarrassed. I would never tell someone that they’re ugly, or that they should be ashamed of themselves. But it’s now time for the family that’s always told them that they’re the best singer and that they could win it ‘†it’s time to let them know that they should probably not audition for this show anymore. And I had no problem being the guy to say that.
