Lauren Huff is a writer at Entertainment Weekly with over a decade of experience covering all facets of the entertainment industry. After graduating with honors from the University of Texas at Austin (Hook 'em, Horns!), Lauren wrote about film, television, awards season, music, and more for the likes of The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline Hollywood, Us Weekly, Awards Circuit, and others before landing at EW in May 2019.
Miss Independent was more like Miss Confused when it came to her time auditioning for American Idol.
Kelly Clarkson, who of course would go on to become the singing competition series' first winner, recalled in a new interview on the Not Gonna Lie With Kylie Kelce podcast that neither she nor the other contestants realized they were auditioning for a TV show -- at first.
The head-scratching anecdote came about when Kelce pulled up a viral tweet about Clarkson, which said, "It's wild to me that American Idol found America's best vocalist on their first try."
"Thank you, Mom," Clarkson joked of the tweet, before explaining, "For all of us in that first season, we literally didn't -- I didn't even know it was a TV show until my third audition. Like, we were literally trying to pay our bills. We're like, 'Oh, this might work. I might meet someone or whatever.' Nobody knew it was gonna amount to anything."
She added: "We were literally kids, you know, 19 years old just, like, trying to pay my electric bill, y'all. You know, and afford the deductible on my car that was bashed in that I couldn't afford. So it was a different thing. I don't look at it like how everybody perceives it."
Clarkson beat out fellow finalists Justin Guarini (the season's runner-up) and Nikki McKibbin to become the long-running show's inaugural winner, which the singer and TV host said was an isolating experience compared to what future champs would have.
"I had no one," Clarkson said. "I was the first winner. It was hard. Not to sound like -- whatever, it was really hard."
The "Since U Been Gone" singer, who went on to be a coach on The Voice for nine seasons, also spoke about how unnamed people associated with that show had been unkind to her after her Idol win.
"People were really mean," Clarkson said. "People that were really mean have been coaches. You know what I'm saying? Like, hated talent shows. And they ended up being on The Voice."
She's made her peace with it now, she said, but, "People were really cruel at first. They didn't like it. It took the industry kind of by storm, the talent shows. It was a very unlikable thing in the industry concerning the populous."
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As Clarkson pointed out, the irony is "hilarious" to think about now, since there are "so many" talent shows on TV these days.
Elsewhere on the podcast, the two dished on Kelce's husband, former NFL player Jason Kelce; his Philly Special Christmas album and if Clarkson would ever get in on those recordings; the best piece of motherhood advice they've ever received; the realities of being a working mother; and more.