What’s The Kelly Clarkson Show without Kelly Clarkson? Just The Show, I guess — with a revolving door of guest hosts who had been stepping in during Clarkson’s unexplained absence for the last few weeks. Beginning March 3, when Simu Liu subbed at the last minute, celebrities like Brooke Shields and Kal Penn have been filling her seat. But after ten episodes and curious fan speculation, Clarkson made her return on March 18 without addressing her brief hiatus. And since some episodes were pretaped, the From Justin to Kelly star was once again absent the next day, when Andy Cohen hosted the March 19 episode. But thank God she was back again for the episode we were in the studio audience for, which aired March 20, just in time to celebrate the show’s landmark 1,000th episode. Though given her absences, the episode was probably somewhere in the 900s for Clarkson.
At the taping of the milestone episode at her Rockefeller Center studio (which the show moved to from Los Angeles in 2023), Clarkson was her usual chatty self and admittedly over-caffeinated — which would have given any court stenographer a run for their money. She also was dropping enough “motherfuckers” with her guest Tyler Perry to keep the editing bay’s bleep button busy for the rest of the day. In addition to Perry, who was there to promote his new film, Duplicity, her guests included Alicia Vikander (who brought Swedish candy Clarkson hated and spit out) and the Venezuelan pop duo Mau y Ricky (who gifted her alcohol, which was much more well received). The candy might have flopped, but the teaser for Vikander’s new movie, The Assessment, definitely won Clarkson over, in which Vikander acted out like a child to assess whether a couple would be good parents.
While “Since U Been Gone” would have been an apt Kellyoke for her grand return, the episode featured a prerecorded, stripped-down cover of Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing” — probably because they were worried about how I would react to seeing a Kellyoke live in person. But an iconic performance was still delivered for the show’s studio audience, when Clarkson had to reshoot a pickup of one of her questions after the interviews. Since the shot was just on her, she asked it to the empty couch before tossing her hair, turning to the audience, and declaring, “Acting!”
The highlight of the celebration six seasons in the making came via the show’s “What I’m Liking” segment, which normally features viral social-media clips, but for this episode was a montage of Clarkson’s kids River Rose (10) and Remy’s (8) many appearances on the show through the years. Naturally, the clips brought tears to the host’s famously hazel eyes. The montage included Remy’s iconic performance of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” from earlier this year, proof that Kellyoking is a genetic condition. And while musicians everywhere may have been resting easy these past few weeks knowing that Clarkson wouldn’t be Kellyoking their songs (Kellyoke is a verb), the queen of covers is back in Studio 6A and no song is safe.