American Idol has found its new Katy Perry.
Deadline understands that Carrie Underwood has replaced the I Kissed A Girl star on the judging panel. Underwood, of course, rose to fame for winning the fourth season of the show, which then aired on Fox before moving to ABC.
She is expected to sit alongside Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan on the panel for Season 25.
The Disney-owned network has been searching for a replacement for the last few months and Deadline heard that other names that were in talks before Underwood included Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber, something that Luke Bryan alluded, highlighting Pink and Meghan Trainor as well.
Underwood, who has sold around 85M records, is widely considered the most successful of the American Idol winners. She auditioned for the show, which was then on Fox, with Bonnie Raitt’s I Can’t Make You Love Me and her version of Alone was thought to be one of the reasons for her win.
The singer has been a target for numerous music competition series including Idol and The Voice. Idol has been keen to bring back some of its former success stories as judges. In 2018, Kelly Clarkson, who won the first season of Idol in 2002, was thought to have been a target but she ultimately joined The Voice that year.
Perry, Bryan, and Lionel Richie joined American Idol in Season 16 when ABC rebooted the competition.
Following her American Idol exit, Perry said she would focus on her music career and revealed her new song would be Woman’s World, which was released earlier this month.
ABC renewed the show earlier this spring, Season 8 for the network, ahead of the finale of this season. American Idol has provided consistently strong ratings for ABC since the network picked it up in 2018 (after it ended its run at Fox in 2016).
The series is produced by Fremantle and 19 Entertainment, which is part of Sony-owned Industrial Media. It is hosted by Ryan Seacrest.
