Judges Luke Bryan, Katy Perry and Lionel Richie dropped by Jimmy Kimmel Live on Thursday (Feb 25) to talk all things American Idol season 20.
After chatting about their own projects, including Luke and Katy’s respective Las Vegas residencies at Resorts World, and Lionel’s nomination to the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, Kimmel ran a clip of Luke and Katy arguing over an auditioner.
Luke and Katy argue over Danielle Finn. Is that Katy spoiling the show?
The singer is Danielle Finn, who will be featured on this Sunday’s premiere. After Danielle sings, Katy calls out Luke for having “no” written on a piece of paper in front of him. “I’m deeply disturbed,” said Katy. “I looked over at your paper and it says no. I just don’t know what you are listening to! That was so good!” Luke responds, “It just wasn’t exciting.” Katy screeches, “WHAT?” And fans will have to wait until the audition airs to see the rest of the argument.
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Luke admits to Jimmy that he eventually changed his vote. “She did a huge run after that and I threw his paper off of the desk,” said Katy. “And yeah, maybe he was scared of me.”
“What’s interesting about that moment is sometimes the singers will come out of the blocks horrible. They’ll stumble. They’re nervous.” said Luke. “We’re always jotting during their performances. We’ll just do a litte N or a maybe. And then they can come roaring back. If one of us sees something in them special, that we start rallying for that person, it’s really a fun dynamic that we get to do.”
Jimmy asks if Luke was planning to say yes. Katy jumps in: “Well, she’s still in the show. How about that?” OK then. Katy Perry. Spoiler queen!
“And now we can slaughter each other”
Katy insists that in the trio’s fifth season together, they are more combative. “But it’s not that we don’t love and respect each other. We see so much talent after five seasons, we’re all pushing for the best stuff.”
“But also we know each other,” Lionel jumps in. “We can go a little step further. Because in the beginning, I don’t want to step, because I don’t know how you react. And now we can slaughter each other.”
Luke and Katy agree that Lionel is the “nice” guy on American Idol, which leads Jimmy to show a clip from a cameo Lionel did in Dave Grohl’s new parody horror film 666. Dave wrote a vanilla part for Lionel. But the singer wanted to take it up a notch or two or three. “You’ve got to bring that attitude to American Idol!” Katy exclaimed. “That could get us thrown off!”
American Idol season 20 premieres on ABC Sunday Feb 27 at 8 pm ET/PT.
Watch the clip below.
