We’re mere days away from our first look at Carrie Underwood’s big comeback to American Idol as the show’s first winner to return as a judge. An audition special will air March 2 after the 2025 Academy Awards are handed out, and I’m betting those Oscar winners won’t be the only ones feeling the emotion. Underwood opened up a little about what she experienced, saying the nostalgia hit was real, and fellow Idol judge Lionel Richie said something else hit her pretty hard as well.
When American Idol Season 23 premieres on the 2025 TV schedule, it will be 20 years since Carrie Underwood was named the Season 4 champion. If that’s not enough of a blast from the past, this season's Hollywood Week was filmed at Los Angeles’ Orpheum Theatre — a venue familiar to the new judge, who remarked to TV Insider:
I had my Hollywood Week in this theater. In my memory, it was so much bigger. At 21 years old, I’d never been on a plane, never seen anything quite like it. It seemed so grand and massive, and there were so many other contestants. Now I’m sitting at that judges’ table watching them. I’ll see somebody sing and think, ‘Oooh, this is the Bo Bice of this year.’ It’s impossible not to be a bit nostalgic.
Bo Bice was the Season 4 contestant who came in second to Carrie Underwood, so that’s no small praise for whoever inspires that comparison!
The auditions and Hollywood Week taped in the fall, so Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan have already gotten to see what the former contestant is like as a judge. She may have experience on the other side of the table that they don’t, but Richie said one part of the job hit her as hard as any of them. He said:
It was the same thing we went through: How do I say that many nos? [Carrie] was a nervous wreck.
Who could blame her? It seems like it might be even harder for Carrie Underwood to turn people away because she knows exactly what the auditioners are feeling. The “Blown Away” singer, however, comes from those early American Idol days when contestants endured the possibly faked-for-TV rudeness of Simon Cowell, so she likely knows that honest feedback is actually what’s best for the artists, even if it is hard for them to hear.
She said as much when breaking down her judging philosophy. She said she’s well aware that she becomes a part of these singers’ stories as soon as they take the stage, no matter where they end up, and that’s not something her or her fellow judges seem to take lightly.
It’s going to be fun to see Carrie Underwood complete that circle, and I’m sure we’ll witness some of those emotional, nostalgic moments with her along the way.
American Idol’s Season 23 Post-Oscars Audition Special is scheduled for 10:30 p.m. ET Sunday, March 2, on ABC, but if the awards run too late for you to wait up, you can stream it the next day with a Hulu subscription. The official start to Carrie Underwood’s reign kicks off at 8 p.m. ET Sunday, March 9, on ABC.
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