Yahoo Lifestyle ‘The Kelly Clarkson Show’ Execs On Talker Hitting 1,000 Episodes & Huge Reaction To Host’s Recent Absence: “People Love Their Kelly”
On March 17, a stage manager for The Kelly Clarkson Show stood in front of the audience in 30 Rock’s Studio 6A and instructed them when and where it was appropriate to give the host a big hand.
Kelly Clarkson, however, decided to be a bit more direct with her fans.
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“You will applaud because you love it,” the host playfully scolded as the audience started to laugh. “You are so f–king excited! But have fun.”
If Clarkson seemed more than a little plucky that day, she had good reason: the singer-songwriter was about to tape her 1,000 episode of her Emmy-winning talk show. After five and a half years of working through a pandemic, a broken leg, a pesky eye patch, some low-tech shoots from her Montana ranch and a self-professed inability to cook, The Kelly Clarkson Show remains more popular than ever: the Universal TV talk show is ranked No. 2 behind Live with Kelly & Mark (among hour-long talk shows) and is the only hour-long yakker not to drop in year-to-year ratings.
For further proof of Clarkson’s enduring appeal, look no further than her recent disappearance from daytime. Multiple press outlets went wild over her unexplained absence from March 3 to March 13, when she finally returned to production. (Deadline understands that Clarkson’s absence was due to a private matter). The show went on — various celebrities took her place — but fans were desperate for answers.
“It’s so funny because every season there’s been a period where we had to go to guest hosts for one reason or another,” Executive Producer/Showrunner Alex Duda tells Deadline. “But for some reason this year they wrote about it.”
“I love that they missed their Kelly, but we’ve done this before,” adds Tracie Wilson, Executive Vice President, NBCUniversal Syndication Studios and E! News. “I can’t even tell you how many texts I got from family and friends too. Yes, we’ve had guest hosts a lot over the years, so it’s just something about this year. But you’re right, people love their Kelly and they want her on the air, so we appreciate that.”
Ahead of today’s airing of the 1,000 episode, Deadline checked in with Duda and Wilson about what to expect from the milestone installment and what the future looks like for the six-time Emmy winner.
DEADLINE So what do you have planned for the 1,000 episode?
ALEX DUDA We’re going to start the show a little differently. It’s a cold open. We don’t usually do that. We usually either start with a Kellyoke or Kelly walking out the doors and then throwing to a Kellyoke. Today, we are going to have the set decorated with these three big monitors that are framed in wood and gold that say 1000. And then we have a big 1000 lit up that’s going to be center stage. Kelly will be standing by the first monitor and she basically tells the story of our show and everything that we’ve been through together as a team since the beginning, starting with launching into a pandemic and then everything that we endured, like having to figure out how to do remote production. Kelly tells the story of having to tape shows up in Montana and how we would put Kelly in standups out in the snow. She didn’t have any wifi at the time, so she was trying to text these stand-ups to me and I would end up putting the texts in the show.
TRACIE WILSON I just want to point out just for reference that we were only on the air for six months when the pandemic hit. We were really a baby of a show when the shutdown happened, and then we kept going.
DUDA We remind the audience of what we went through, all the places we sent our audience over the years, like London and Australia and through the gift store on the way out of 30 Rock. We talk about how she hosted a bunch of shows with an iPad. She hosted one with her leg in a cast. You will see stills of these moments on the monitors like a patchwork of memories. She talks about how she couldn’t cook and we learned that she was serious when she said she couldn’t. We talk about how we went big for Halloween and bigger for Christmas. We talk about all the animals Joel McHale brought out. Then she walks to the next monitor and she’ll talk about some of the human interest stories we’ve done because really, that’s her favorite part of the show. We get to shine a light on these people doing good in their neighborhoods.
DEADLINE Who is her first guest?
DUDA We tried to think of somebody who was impactful to the show. Tyler Perry is coming because he was important to us. He was one of the first big celebrities. We created the show to be about connection. So once we met Kelly in our first meeting with her, we knew she was a connector, and after we did the pilot, she knew the whole crew’s name. She was bringing people together on the floor. So that meant a celebrity guest would stay with our B celebrity guest and then both would stay with our human interest story. Because if you have all those people on the couch together, you’re going to get a conversation you don’t see on any other show. And even Tyler Perry and whomever else you have on there is not going to have the same conversation if they’re sitting with a human interest story on the couch. Tyler was there way back when in season one, and there was a foundation he stayed for called To Fly, and it was a Texas-based charity that helped underserved students of color have opportunities to travel abroad. He loved it so much.
DEADLINE It’s incredible how her performances remain hugely popular.
WILSON For the studio audience, it’s like a gift. I know when I pop onto set and she’s singing, I feel like I am receiving a gift. Just from our social media and from what we hear, it’s still very much something that people look forward to. Like, oh my God, what is she going to sing today?
DUDA The Kellyokes are important, even to the celebrities. Whitney Cummings was recently here and whatever she was supposed to talk about kind of went out the window because she started talking about the Kellyokes. The first three minutes of that interview was her breaking down different Kellyokes.
WILSON One of the most appealing things about Kelly is that she talks to the human interest regular folks in the same way she talks to the celebrities. She’s just so comfortable in her skin and she doesn’t know how to be any other way. For anyone who comes on, it’s just a really comfortable experience and that’s why people keep coming back.
DEADLINE Traci can you give a state of the union of the genre? What’s the future hold for daytime talk shows? Will Kelly, who is positively sick with Emmys, be the last great talk show host?
WILSON I think it’s a very challenging time in the industry overall. What I feel really good about is that we do have The Kelly Clarkson show and stations are partnering with us to renew it. I don’t know that there’s going to be another huge name single-hosted talk show, but I feel very good in the position we’re in with Kelly.
DEADLINE Are you developing more talk shows for the future?
WILSON We’re currently in development on a bunch of different things. I think we strategically have to look at the market a little bit differently and kind of pivot where the market’s going to try to anticipate what our partners are going to be looking for. But I’m also really grateful that I work for a company like NBC because we are still developing where some of our competitors aren’t quite so much.
DEADLINE Is there pressure to keep costs in check on The Kelly Clarkson Show?
WILSON I think budgets are being scrutinized everywhere. I think we all have to be mindful of how we’re spending our dollars and to make it stretch across the screen while continuing to bring quality. It may be at a lower price point, but that’s industry-wide.
DEADLINE Alex, how has moving to New York changed the show?
DUDA Honestly, the move has been great for the show. Like I said, we launched into a pandemic, so almost the entire time we were in L.A., we either had a small audience or we had an audience of holograms. We had all these vertical monitors with different people lwho zoomed in to watch the show. So it was quiet on the floor. It was great, and I was so grateful for the technology and for our engineering department for figuring that out, but it was quiet. So we moved to New York and it was a big undertaking, but we were able to retain most of the staff, which is great because we have this shorthand together. When you’re doing something big like producing through a pandemic or moving to New York quickly, it’s great to have that shorthand because then you just realize you can do anything. Now we’re right across the hall from the Tonight Show. They’re such good neighbors. We’re downstairs from Seth Meyers and SNL, and it’s cool being in this historic building. Plus we have tour groups going through, so we get 200 people in our audience every single day. They’re really invested in the show, so that energy you can’t get anywhere else than New York City. And Kelly’s loved it.
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