American Idol

by Richard Rushfield

  The show became a national sensation by providing an element that had all but vanished from the air—family viewing. In the increasingly divided, niche-marketed world of network television, Idol became the one show that families across generations would watch. Nevertheless, in this first year, it struggled to find its footing. The first season’s episodes featured the singers going for photo shoots, building a house for Habitat for Humanity, and getting image advice from the editors of YM magazine, and the first attempts at group numbers featured them singing around a campfire. Stage manager Debbie Williams remembers, “We had no choreographer, we just did a number. I said to the kids, ‘Just have fun. Run around the stage. Have a good time, you know.’ They were very inventive, but it was mayhem.”

  Helton recalls of those early shoots, and the campfire sing-along in particular, “We were home that night and we were all in pajamas, just hanging out and we had to do that and from what I remember it was a pretty quick shoot. We just sang through it a few times and it was done . . . and when we went back and watched it on TV we would laugh so hard at ourselves because it was just that cheesy.’ ”

  The results episodes, in particular, became so thin that the Dallas Morning News suspected they were padded with extra commercials and set their timers to see how much actual programming was in the half-hour show. The entertainment content clocked in at eighteen minutes, three to four minutes fewer than the average for a network show of that length. Fox president Sandy Grushaw conceded to the paper, “It ain’t easy, and there is a little bit of treading water.”

  Great discussion developed around how to treat the exiting contestants. Darnell tells, “Either after the first or second one, I came up with this idea of having the kids sing out in the end. Everybody said, ‘That’s going to be cruel.’ It seems so normal now. But at the time, there was a big debate, wasn’t it mean to have them have to sing after they just found out they’re gone. I said, ‘Well, maybe it’s a little mean.’ Which I’m not opposed to. But if I’m right, it’ll be a big emotional send-off. You’re giving them their last shot to sing off. They may be emotional during the song, and it’s their last moment in the sun.”

  With the ratings now surpassing twelve million viewers, plans for building up the Idol brand sprang up from every corner. Poland and South Africa had already launched their own versions of Idol. Germany and France announced plans to jump in the game with talks under way in dozens of other markets. With Idol on its way to becoming an international phenomenon, Simon Fuller announced plans for a World Idol show, pitting the winners from various nations against each other. A movie featuring the stars was being shopped around Hollywood. As in the United Kingdom, a nationwide concert tour was planned, a Vegas reunion special, and a Christmas show. T-shirts sold online. In every network suite, a host of Idol imitators were planned, including, in the ultimate irony, Star Search, which CBS announced would return to the airwaves, starring Arsenio Hall in the Ed McMahon slot.

  While much of the media had swooped down to cover the Idol phenomenon, the contempt of America’s critics had only hardened as its popularity grew. The Washington Post’s influential Tom Shales wrote, “One might argue that Chuck Barris’s inspired romp The Gong Show trafficked in humiliation of amateurs too, but it was good-natured, harmless stuff. It was, in that time-honored phrase, all in good fun. American Idol is all in mean spirit.” The Web site Slate harrumphed, “As an English import, the show is jubilantly indecent: Coke-sponsored, footlight-flooded, presided over by a graphic, androgynous idol that flaunts disturbing protean anatomy. I wonder if the universally pious Christian contestants (they all seem to pray constantly; one is even named Christina Christian, straight up) have any problem with the show’s crass look, a monument to the cut-rate exploitative sensibility of the post–Spice Girls London pop music scene.”

  But Idol had become almost the definition of a criticproof show. By turning its controls over to the public, it wasn’t Fox’s picks that the critics were sniffing at: These weren’t Simon Fuller’s singers or Rupert Murdoch’s, they were the singers America itself had chosen, and if the critics had a bone to pick, it was with the public itself.

  Approaching the final stretch of the season, the remaining stars were near the brink of exhaustion. The performers were working around the clock. Their voices were giving out, and the signs of strain and stress were beginning to show. Finally, on the top six week, singer Christina Christian collapsed and was rushed to the hospital.

  “All of them were tiny because they weren’t eating properly,” recalls one crew member. “Christina had gotten so thin . . . you know that expression you turn sideways and I can’t see you? I swear to you, she turned sideways and I was looking at her and I couldn’t see her. I was like, how did her organs get in there?”

  The following night, in what still stands as the most awkward results show in Idol history, Christina was eliminated in absentia. Seacrest and Dunkleman read the results and looked into the camera, informing the singer in her hospital bed that her journey had ended.

  Christian’s elimination came to the audience as something of a surprise, as she had been an early favorite, and given that Cowell’s punching bag, Nikki, remained, the decision sparked the show’s very first flurry of conspiracy talk. In American history, the conspiracy mind-set has lurked beneath the discussion of all our great turning points; the American mind has been constantly on the lookout for the shadowy forces silently manipulating events. And so would it be with the discussion of American Idol, for which every season has produced a new conspiracy legend of vote fraud and dastardly doings.

  The theories tied to Christian’s ouster were hazy and unfocused, but many alleged that the combination of the hospitalization and the surprise verdict were somehow too much to be believed. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote, “Conspiracy theories abounded last week when judge fave Christina Christian was the latest contestant booted from American Idol. Add to the mystery that Christian wasn’t even present to receive the news, cited as being ill and in the hospital” and Entertainment Weekly fumed, “Something is rotten in the state of Hollywood. How gullible do the producers of American Idol think we really are? Does anyone really believe the sultry Christina Christian got booted off? Yeah, right, like she got fewer votes than Nikki or RJ. I don’t think so. Sorry.”

  The chatter gained legs a week later when the Associated Press wrote a story about the potential for “power dialers” using automated devices to, in effect, stuff the ballot box. They wrote, “With fast Internet connections and powerful computer autodialing software, about 100 ‘phone phreaks’ are casting thousands of votes with the touch of a button, producers acknowledged this week in response to questions from the Associated Press. ‘They’re all over the country and they tend to be slamming the system at all ends,’ said Michael Eaton, vice president of home entertainment for FremantleMedia, the show’s London-based producer. So far, these calls have had a ‘statistically insignificant’ impact on the outcome, Eaton said, but he wouldn’t release any data on individual contestants and their vote totals.” While no evidence was to surface that the power dialers had any significant effect on the voting—and to this day, Idol producers assert they did not and have not—the revelation of their existence was salacious enough to keep the story afloat until the end of the season, picked up and duplicated by nearly every major publication in America, discussed on network news shows, and referenced on magazine covers.

  The conspiracy theories had, however, the effect of keeping Idol at the center of the national conversation even when the show hit slow patches. The chatter ultimately convinced few that a fraud was afoot, but ironically it kept the Idol ball in the air, one of many ways in the coming years that the show would prove incredibly adept at turning even its negative attention to its benefit. In the end, rival shows would kill for such conspiracy theories.

  Elsewhere, tensions began to show. One obvious flashpoint was the hastily paired cohosts. Thrown together moments before air, it was becom
ing obvious that the two had never found a chemistry. At best, they took turns reciting scripted lines; at worst, they appeared visibly uncomfortable with each other. Having struck up a friendship with the star judge on-screen, the frenetic Seacrest felt comfortable diving in and ribbing Cowell, exchanging insults in what would become their trademark banter. Hanging back, Dunkleman was often left looking like the odd man out at the dinner party. His discomfort with the format, particularly with the cruelty of it, also peeked through.

  “Things would upset him,” remembers Debbie Williams. “He would sometimes change things on the air to mess with Ryan. He did that a few times and Ryan would look at me after we stopped doing whatever that intro was, and he’d look at me and he’d go, ‘What was that about?’ Ryan always handled it. He always handled it and it was tough at times. I think as Dunkleman became more unsure and it was so comfortable for Ryan, I think that bothered him.”

  Elsewhere, the already fraught relationship between McKibbin and Cowell boiled over. One day during dress rehearsal in top five week, Nikki stood onstage while a taped segment showing the contestants going to get makeovers ran. A dozen feet away, Cowell sat at the judges’ desk watching. “I had blue eye shadow on and red lipstick, and they showed that clip and I hear him say, ‘Oh, my God,’ when they showed my face. So when it was my turn, instead of coming out singing, I came out bitching, ‘What did you mean, oh, my God?’ because at this point I’m just fed up and I didn’t care anymore. He said, ‘What are you talking about?’ I said, ‘I heard you say “Oh, my God” when my face came up there. What did you mean, oh, my God?’ He goes, ‘Let me tell you something, the world doesn’t revolve around you, you little bitch.’

  “I was mad as hell. I was thinking to myself, Shut up, Nikki, but before I could shut up a foot popped out of my mouth and I yelled, ‘I’ll fucking show you a bitch,’ and that was it. We did not get along ever after that.” The audience, Nikki recalls, was frozen in mute horror.

  That week also marked the end of the road for RJ Helton, sent home after his rendition of “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)” on love songs of Burt Bacharach week. Helton recalls of his experience, “I knew that I was not going to be the winner by any means. I either thought that it was going to be that week or the week after. I tried to mentally and emotionally prepare myself for the worst but when I woke up the morning of the results show, I don’t know what it was, something came over me and I just knew that it was my time. I knew that I was leaving that night.

  “Normally there’s an assistant producer, one that I was very close with, and she always came up to me and said good morning and we’d hang out and have coffee or whatever and she didn’t come up to me that morning and a lot of the staff kind of stayed away from me. People weren’t coming up to me and being friendly. I was like, ‘Well, shit. Two plus two equals four.’ I knew that was my final night. I tried to cry and get it all out before the show. Nothing I guess prepares you for that.”

  As the top four week beckoned, Kelly’s surge continued. In the Vegas oddmakers’ charts, Tamyra was now reckoned to be the favorite, with her odds to win at 2 to 1, but just below, tied at 3 to 1, Kelly now shared the challenger’s berth with Justin. “We all thought Tamyra was going to win,” says Lythgoe of the competition at that point.

  While the contest turned into a three-way race in the public mind, there were also hints that it had turned into a three-way something else in the background. Initially, the rules separating the male and female sections of the mansion had been strictly enforced, but in the waning days of the season, as schedules grew more harried and as the contestants were rarely all in the house at the same time, it became easier to come and go freely, a fact, it was said by some, that was taken advantage of by the lone male now living in the house. Apparently Justin Guarini had very quietly become close with the new front-runner, Tamyra.

  Later, the rumor would fly around the set that Justin had been getting close with another front-runner, Kelly Clarkson. It would not be hard to believe that among young, attractive people, living and working together in a very intense situation with the eyes of the world upon them, their relationships could spill over into something more than just work. Whether they did or not in this case is hard to know for sure; ten years later, the subjects aren’t talking. But one hint, and a sense of how the participants may have felt about this triangle, appears on Kelly’s first album. On that first effort, there is one song, “You Thought Wrong,” cowritten and sung in a duet by Kelly and Tamyra, that lurks in plain sight as a possible insight to an experience they shared. The lyrics told the story of two women who realize they are being played by the same man. The potential meaning of the song, whose one line declares “Boy, your cover’s blown,” went over the heads of the album’s critics.

  As top four night approached, the pundits assumed that the bells would now, at last, toll for Nikki, who had dodged fate while falling into the “McKibbin Zone” week after week. Before the show, however, Idol had to face its first sex scandal, another ritual that was to become an annual tradition. The morning before the performances the National Enquirer published an issue with the cover story “Idol Cutie’s Shocking Life as a Stripper,” detailing Nikki’s stint dancing at the Heartbreakers club in Texas. While she and the show shrugged off the story, it added to the popular sentiment that, with a clear top three chosen by the pundit community—voters be damned—it was time for McKibbin to go. USA Today wrote, “Nikki McKibbin fans won’t want to miss tonight’s American Idol as even the most rabid among them have to figure that this is her last stand on the show. Then again, few Idol experts thought Nikki would last this long, so you never know.”

  As it turned out, on what was supposed to be her swan song, Nikki had one of her best nights of the year. Her rendition of “I’m the Only One” even inspired kindness in Cowell, who likely thought he was delivering her eulogy, and reversed his recent verdicts: “You’ve absolutely proven to yourself and to everybody else that you belong here in this competition.” Tamyra, for her part, after a string of stellar nights and relentless praise from the judges, had a just okay night.

  Coming down to the wire, fifteen million people tuned in for the top four week. Better still, proving the intensity of the viewers, a full fifteen million votes were cast by phone.

  In the end, when the votes were cast, it was Tamyra who was sent packing.

  It was, and remains, arguably the most shocking ouster in Idol history. Seven years later, Cowell would say he felt that it was the greatest disappointment the voters had ever delivered. Looking back, Guarini says, “I really, truly believe that Tamyra would’ve gone to the finals if she had not been voted off shockingly that night. I believe that she and Kelly would’ve probably gone to the finals.”

  In the studio, the audience seemed on the brink of rioting: Actual screams of horror could be heard, boos sounding from every corner. The judges looked as though they were about to be sick. “I’m in a total state of shock. It’s like I’m seeing Muhammad Ali get knocked down for the first time,” a shaken Paula said. Standing awkwardly beside the toppled favorite, Nikki smiled as best she could as the wave of boos washed over her, breaking down in tears as Tamyra said her farewells and as the judges assured her superstardom awaited on the other side of Idol’s threshold. Although the jeers may have been for the elimination in the abstract, for Nikki they felt very personal. Coming after weeks of abuse, it was all getting hard to take. “Week after week they just degrade her and degrade her,” Nikki’s grandmother told a Texas interviewer.

  It was about to get worse.

  “New Idol Boot a Shocker” screamed the headline in the New York Post. The next day they followed up with a story asking their readers to weigh in on “Should Nikki Just Quit?” The Toronto Star wrote, “The official Fox message boards immediately lit up with thousands of posts, most containing intricate conspiracies, grave pronouncements about racial inequality in America . . . or outraged cries for vengeful boycotts and petitions.”
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  “The list of finalists gets more depressing,” wrote the Washington Post’s Lisa de Moraes. “It’s now down to a tone-deaf hottie mom, an all-American type with a great voice, and a narcissistic wedding singer who talks to his hair. . . .”

  In retrospect, Tamyra’s ouster can probably be attributed to a factor that would plague many a contestant to come. Tamyra Gray was poised, professional, and unflappable, the very qualities Idol audiences do not want. Part of the Idol myth is the story of unprofessionalism, the diamond in the rough, the amateur. Idol audiences want to see their princesses squeal with excitement when they make the big stage. Again and again, they have shown they want to see their champions stumble, overcome with emotion and so blown away they can’t believe their good fortune. Again and again, singers to whom it all seemed too easy would find themselves at odds with the reigning mythos.

  The following week, Nikki’s agonies finally came to an end, but not before one last twist of the knife from Simon. “America will have got it right if Kelly and Justin are on the Kodak stage next week,” he said, just in case anyone had missed his point the night before. Nikki recalls of the moment: “Those are the instances that a lot of people capture on their pictures to print out for their camera, that split second where you can tell how really pissed off I am. That’s the picture that they print up. My grandmother has them all over her house. It’s just the picture where you glimpse just how pissed off I was. I think the top three, I always kept smiling but when we got to me and Kelly and Justin and Simon said that, when they panned back up to my face, too, I’m livid, like . . . ‘You’re a fucking asshole . . . I don’t give a shit. Whatever.’ ”

  The end did finally come that night. Nikki was eliminated and the historic matchup of Justin and Kelly for American Idol’s first crown was confirmed.