When musician-singer-producer Lionel Richie was first asked to be a judge on “American Idol,” he said no. “I said, ‘Guys, I'm busy. I'm an artist. I have to be on the road. I want to be out where my fans are.’”
He was where his fans were. The four-time Grammy winning performer, who also earned an Academy Award and sold over 100 million records continued to appear before adoring audiences. That was some years ago, and on Sunday Richie returns as one of three judges on ABC’s “American Idol,” as it launches its 20th year.
“I got to a point in my life where you have all of this knowledge, you actually know a lot about what they (the contestants) are going through,” says Richie. “So, when I was asked this time around, the answer was ‘Yeah!’”
He and co-judges Katy Perry and Luke Bryan have suffered the same jitters that plague the hopefuls on the show, he says. “The difference is, now we know exactly how they feel. We've been there before. We've heard no’s more than we've ever heard yeses,” he says.
"And, so, to get here and to know what they are going through probably is half the game to us. We are there actually holding their hands and understanding that — let's talk about something for a minute. We are talking about talent. That's one thing. But what are they going through while they are trying to sing?”
Getting there wasn’t easy for any of the now-famous trio. “The one thing for me was probably hearing ‘no’ so many times,” says Perry, who rose to fame with such hits as “I Kissed a Girl” and “One of the Boys.”
“And then, still betting on myself and believing after having three record deals and being dropped, and two cars repossessed and sleeping on couches and eating Trader Joe's chicken tenders for, like, a year and a half. That was not that hard, but it was, it was all a part of the process,” she says.
For country singer-songwriter Luke Bryan, best known for his winning numbers, “Drink a Beer,” “Kick the Dust Up” and “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye,” it was not only arriving on top, but staying there.
“I think for me it was about each level of having to conquer,” says Bryan. “You move to Nashville, then you have to conquer Nashville. Then you have to go get a record deal. And constantly — no matter what you do — you've always got to reinvent yourself and take it to the next level. And each stress of that next level, gosh, was always very, very challenging. And that's what so many of these kids don't realize, that the stress never ends.”
Richie, who got his start with the six-man band, The Commodores, says it was different for him. “I came from a group situation. So I could take the no’s a lot better because there were five other guys that took the no’s with me. But, there’s one thing that you just cannot overlook, and that's the time you have to put in.
“And there's always that moment where you say, ‘I'm ready.’ And we hear these kids on ‘American Idol’ say so many times, ‘I'm ready. I'm 15 years old. I'm ready to go.’ And we're saying, ‘No, you're not,’” he says.
Hearing that phrase when he was younger was a bitter pill to swallow, he confesses. “That was very tough for us, because here we are, 20 years old, 21 years old, we just killed the crowd and the guy says, ‘You're five years away from being where you really want to be.’
“And I just couldn't put that in my head. What do you mean five years from now? But we didn't have the experience. And so, what we have to do as judges is actually tell them the same thing, which is: ‘You're not ready yet.’ ... We know what they're thinking, because at 15, of course you're ready. You sound perfect. There's nothing to do but just go on stage and kill it.”
Bryan finds it thrilling to discover that special talent on the series. “That door opens at ‘American Idol,’ and there's an artist. There's a person that comes in that door, and we don't care what they look like. We don't care their sexual orientation. We don't care where they are going. We look at them with an open heart and an open mind. And do you know what? For the most part, what I'm proud (about) this show is we feel like our viewers at home are doing the exact same thing. Are we ever going to bat a thousand? Never. But we damn sure work hard to give everybody love.”
An antidote for commercial TV
If you're sick of commercial television with its endless ads featuring drugs with made-up names, SUV’s splashing through treacherous streams and insurance companies trying desperately to be funny, then there’s a streaming site for you.
Wondrium is a new streamer which offers lectures from the best professors from across the U.S. (voted by students NOT administrators). They are talking about their favorite subjects, and unlike the some of the droning teachers we might have had in the past, these are amazingly engrossing.
Formerly known as The Great Courses Plus, the lectures cover everything from cooking to calculus. Have you ever wondered about the historical Jesus, the great Black inventors or the Beatles? Here are all those courses you missed in school without the homework, midterms or pop quizzes.
Some of the sessions include: The Meaning of Life, Following the Footsteps of Vincent Van Gogh, Artisan Bread Making, Home Maintenance, How to Speak so People Will Listen, How to Play the Ukulele, Mind Blowing Science, Hip Hop Grooves with Twitch, the Decisive Battles of History, Extreme Offenders, and on and on.
Wondrium costs $20 a month or $15 a month on a quarterly basis, or $12.50 a month if you sign up for a year. Television always claimed that it could be a Eureka source for learning. Now it finally is.
Procedural returns to the nest
The original “Law & Order,” the one that spawned so many offspring, will be back on NBC Thursday. Sam Waterston, who played District Attorney Jack McCoy for 16 seasons, will return as will Anthony Andrews who was junior detective Bernard for two seasons.
Waterston says that Dick Wolf, the creator and executive producer of all the “Law & Order” iterations, never gave up on reviving his prototype.
“He was talking about it five years ago too, and I don't think he's ever stopped talking about it,” says Waterston. “One of the reasons that we're back is because of his persistence and determination and his complete conviction that it was a terrible mistake to stop in the first place.
“The other reason that we're coming back, though, I think is because we stopped making the shows, but the audience never stopped watching them. So the audience's persistent appetite for ‘Law & Order’ is a major reason why we're back. So thanks to them.”
The show was famous for hiring underemployed theater actors for the series. One of those was Jerry Orbach, who portrayed the senior detective Lennie Briscoe for 12 seasons. Just before he died in 2004 he told me, “On ‘Law & Order’ first of all, I know the guy, and don't have to worry about the character. He's a facet of me.... The scenes are usually very short. After we've had our initial script meeting about a particular script and going through ideas and points of logic, I don't look at the script again. If we come to play a scene, and I meet you for first time, I don't know what you're going to be like or how you're going to behave as the character. I don't know where we're going to sit or how we're going to do it — just like in life. I'll learn the lines by the time they get it lit because the memory is almost photographic. So I come with no plan. I act it by the seat-of-my-pants kind of. And that's fun for me. You can never get bored doing that because every day I meet new people.”
Changes due for 'Killing Eve'
The female antagonists will be back on Sunday when “Killing Eve” returns for its fourth and final season on BBC America and AMC+. The characters have gone through changes since we last spied them. “I think at the beginning of Season 4 you see the greatest amount of change,” says star Sandra Oh.
“I really wanted to establish that Eve physically, energetically is very, very much changed. You see her different in the way that she’s clearly gained skills, that she’s not afraid of violence in herself or inflicting it on others, that she’s also integrated a lot of elements from Villanelle in either disguises or personas. And I just really wanted that change and that freshness to kind of come into the fourth season.”
Oh says she feels people really can change. “I think in personality they stay the same, but I do believe people can change. If they can’t, I just think all is lost. I’m not joking. I feel like all is lost ... There’s different levels of change. What I realize is for true change to happen, it’s so personal. It’s so personal, and you have to work really, really hard on it. And it is possible. On other levels of changing behavior, you’re changed by an event, and it’s then your job to put that change into practice.”
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