Rocking American Idol Performance!
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It’s 11:21 a.m. Tuesday and I just walked into my office for the first time. I never really get a chance to get upstairs before the show; so much needs to be done in such little time, and most of that takes place in the greenroom or studio.
Today’s show went a little long — we actually had to do some post-tapes, which we do immediately after our live show onto tape. We try to race through these taped segments because our studio gets turned around for another show on a completely different network. We share the same building as the Fox News and Fox Business Channels; at about 11am the crew for Martha MacCallum’s 1 p.m. show on FOX takes over and literally tears
The Morning Show set down, putting her set in its place.Speaking of today’s show — I LOVED Carly Smithson from American Idol. Some interesting things about her… She definitely seemed worn out this morning when we met, which was at about 7 a.m. She’s been on a hard core media blitz (not to mention dealing with the drama of getting kicked off last week unexpectedly) which has got to be exhausting. She was here early to rehearse, ran over to do the Today Show, then ran back to be interviewed and perform for our show. I was a little worried that her energy seemed down, but she turned it on as we drew closer to air time.
Carly is absolutely gorgeous in person. The camera does her justice; reality even more so. Her eyes are piercing blue, and her whole persona is very charming. She seems very mellow, she’s polite and engaging. And her voice is awesome.
I’m not sure, but I got the feeling she started to lose confidence during the competition. She was like a shoo-in early on, but as the weeks went by, Simon really laid into her. I felt like he was holding her to a higher standard and was harder on her than the others. Her “ok” performances were “amazing” for the others. But I kind-of got the sense that negativity chipped away at her confidence and ultimately, it hurt her.
We were talking about my dress — Jigsaw, I think the designer is. We started talking about the wardrobe for the show. She mentioned she’s “bigger” than the other girls — huh???? She has a great figure! I think the other girls were maybe a little eeensy weensy compared to her. Based on some of her answers to Greg, our producer who did the pre-interview with her, I think she may have felt a little hit in the self-esteem department at certain points, especially as the competition wore on. I hope now that she’s out of the Idol bubble, she’ll be able to see herself in a different light. I’m not suggesting I have any real insight to her thoughts; I just get that feeling based on her comments to Greg. And to me.
During the commercial break after her performance, I made a joke to her and her husband, Todd about who they didn’t like in the competition. Leave it to me to ‘go there’. I threw out “Brooke?” and they both jumped in and said “No!,” quite the opposite. Todd grew very close with Brooke’s husband, and Carly said Brooke makes her cry every time she hears her sing. Although I don’t get the Brooke appeal, I definitely understand the feeling of emotion brought on by a phenomenal performance. As Mike said when I was getting all teary after Carly performed — watching Idol, you get invested in these people’s lives. After seeing how successful you really CAN become by being on this show and doing well, it really is inspirational. And it definitely affects me when I see a person who is probably, likely, hopefully on the brink of massive stardom. It’s just like “WOW, your life is going to change so much, and you have no idea yet.”
Her performance today was solid but waaaaay too quick. I could’ve listened to her for another couple hours. God, I sound like I’m in love, ha-ha. I think Doug may be, though. He randomly surprised me today on his way to work, but I have a distinct feeling it was because Carly was around. He loved her from day one, her performing, I mean. But I don’t know… I think there may be something else going on there wink wink. It’s cool. She’s awesome.
And her husband is so sweet. That truly did shock me. He’s a tough looking guy, with all the tattoos, including on his entire face and head. He’d be sitting there behind the judges during each show, and when Simon would start to criticize Carly, I got the sense Todd wanted to jump over and give Simon a beat down. However… after meeting the guy, I suspect that would never be the case. He was really nice! He and Doug talked about running marathons; I guess Todd’s thinking of running one. Doug has run quite a few, including last year’s NYC Marathon.
I’m going to cut this one short today because Mike and I are doing a photo shoot for our website. I think. I can never remember what is going on and which shoot goes to which medium. I’m not good at these things either. I feel dorky posing. Bad for red carpets. After spending so many years in news, I feel weird “staging” myself. I’ll get over it though!
