- Let's get our first guest
despite the challenge of taping remotely
America's Got Talent is back y'all
one of the creators and judges on the show is my friend
Simon Cowell and he's on the line right now,
what's up Simon, how you doing?
- Hello Kelly.
- Hello Simon,
how are you doing? - How are you?
- I'm good, how are you?
- Are you well?
- I am actually, I'm wearing one of my favorite colors,
so this will bring happiness, right?
(laughs)
- So how are you managing?
- We're good,
we've had a weird pandemic experience,
but everyone's has been different.
How is your family doing in it?
- Well, thanks for asking
actually, pretty good actually.
The trick is you turn the news off,
stick to a routine, keep your brain going and then
you manage.
- Yeah, I mean it is kind of cool in the sense
that I've never colored more or done more Legos
or done more camping and done,
like I've done so many things with my kids that normally,
I haven't been able to. - You and I years ago
should have gone into the Lego business together.
(laughs) - I know.
They're amazing.
It's like therapy, I sit there and I'm like,
yeah let's do this.
And it's like a giant castle
but somehow I'm not overwhelmed 'cause of the directions.
So do you ever find yourself
like giving like unsolicited judgment at home?
Or like around your friends,
you just got to give your opinion without anyone asking?
- Of course.
(laughs) - Me too.
- Of course.
I mean, it's almost like your full time occupation now
is to be a judge on everything, it's hilarious.
- I know, we've become like the jerk at the dinner.
- But you know what the reality is,
and you know this being on both sides now
is that when you find an artist
and they're like little diamonds,
the ones that do well are the ones who know
where they wanna be at the end of the,
I'd use the word journey, whatever you wanna call it
but the end of the competition.
Someone has to know
at the end of all this, this is what I wanna be doing
and that's the hardest thing.
If they say to you, well tell me what to say
well blah, blah, blah
you've got a problem from that point.
- I agree.
So how did you change America's Got Talent
because of the pandemic,
we had to change The Voice obviously,
so how did y'all do that.
- We made it out day by day, Kelly
I mean, I'm not kidding.
I mean, we started off
because don't forget when we first started,
the story was about that big, right?
And then by the second day the story is now that big.
So we started off with a full audience
then after five days we've got half an audience.
And then of course we lost Heidi
after I think three or four days.
And then the final two days, we literally auditioned
without anyone in the theater at all.
And it was I think for the contestants
probably the hardest thing ever
'cause you walk out to this wall of silence.
Weirdly, I think they kind of had to up their game almost
because they needed something to compensate
for no audience or no reaction.
So a couple as you'll see coming up over the next few weeks,
really amazing.
I wouldn't wanna do it again.
But the latter parts, we've just come up with ways
where the show is gonna look different
and how do we make it still feel like it's not
just people singing from their homes.
It's I think there is a way of getting people together
but separating them and it's much more about the judges
going to find them in different parts of the lot,
et cetera, et cetera.
So it'll feel different
and in fact I'm filming this afternoon
so I'll let you know whether it works or not.
(laughs)
But sometimes I kind of like the unknown
and just always at the back of your mind thinking
no matter where you are let's just make them great.
- Yeah, no I get that.
I can go along with that
because I'm not a producer in charge,
'cause we were doing The Voice
I felt so sorry for our producer Audrey.
I was like, "Oh my God, she's gonna die."
Like I'm alive and it was a lot, so.