Kelly Clarkson’s Fresh Start: Finally, I Can Smile and Really Mean It

“Is there an audition going on?” a woman asks in the lobby of 30 Rock, the iconic New York City building where shows like Today, The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, and Saturday Night Live film. It’s not an outrageous assumption. A line of nearly 200 men and women, most in crisp black suits with blindingly white shirts, is snaking down the hallway to the Grand Staircase. They are doormen and women, taking a break from their posts in city buildings to make up the audience for the Season 5 premiere for the newest series to set up residence at the address: The Kelly Clarkson Show.

After four seasons filmed in Los Angeles, the production moved to New York this year at Clarkson’s behest, following a tumultuous divorce and a desire to leave California—and that chapter of her life—behind. It was her idea to populate the premiere audience with doormen and women, after being touched by her warm interactions with so many of them when she arrived in the city. There was no casting call; Clarkson wanted actual people who work that job and who become like family to buildings’ residents. The production team literally went, well, door to door, asking workers to come to the show. “The city is littered with unsigned packages!” Seth Meyers, the season’s first guest, joked.

Meyers was part of a roster of familiar faces who work in the building and stopped by the premiere, which airs Oct. 16. Today’s Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager were also guests, bringing chips and homemade queso with them. Name That Tune host Jane Krakowksi presided over a door-themed trivia showdown where Kotb and Bush Hager competed against Meyers and Clarkson in a game called—wait for it—“Hoda the Door.” (The game podiums were made by Parks and Recreation star Nick Offerman, and shipped to New York from Los Angeles.) Andy Cohen, one of TV’s most reliable hype men, introduced Clarkson’s entrance, giddily jumping up and down as she entered through a—yes, obviously—door and a line of applauding door men and women, singing.

As with every episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, the premiere opened with a “Kellyoke” performance, a beloved segment in which Clarkson covers a new song every episode—her jaw-dropping, acrobatic vocals often elevating the numbers to places the original artists couldn’t reach. (I imagine it would be both an honor and absolutely horrifying to have Clarkson cover your song, and then sing it better than you.)

For this taping, Clarkson is actually performing one of her own songs, the track “I Won’t Give Up,” off the deluxe edition of her latest album Chemistry, a record that chronicled the range of emotion she felt going through her divorce. She stops midway through, unhappy with the blocking that would have her performing straight to the audience, strangely untethered from the show’s band, Y’all, led by music director Jason Halbert. “It’s not, like, ‘His Eye Is on a Sparrow,’” she jokes, asking if she could restage it so she’d be singing next to the musicians. It’s better vibes, she says, “especially for the first episode!”

In an interview with The Daily Beast’s Obsessed before the taping, Clarkson says the choice to kick off the season with “I Won’t Give Up” is a poignant and, she hopes, powerful one. “There’s this new, fresh start,” she says. It’s a new season in a new city for a show that had its first season interrupted by a pandemic. Its entire aesthetic and schedule had to be reconfigured to adapt, with Clarkson at one point even hosting remotely from her ranch in Montana. Season 5’s premiere is occurring after a writer’s strike that shut down the industry, which “we as a show supported,” Clarkson says. “From Season 1, we have not had a normal season. It’s been a really weird ride, and we don’t give up.” Hence the song.

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While The Kelly Clarkson Show has been an unmitigated success, it hasn’t been an easy run. Since its premiere in 2019, the show has won 13 Emmy Awards. It's been a ratings hit, with its viewership growing each season, and was selected to take over the coveted Ellen slot in the daytime lineup when Ellen DeGeneres ended her show. There have been awards, glowing reviews, and accompanying its success, media scrutiny. But the show has weathered unpredictable outside forces as well.

“When we started we ran into the impeachment trial that was preempting us, and then we went into a global pandemic and became a COVID production,” executive producer and showrunner Alex Duda tells Obsessed. “And then Kelly went through a divorce. And then there was the writer’s strike. We just keep pivoting.”

And for Clarkson, that’s personal, too. “This will be the first season I’m fully present and not incredibly sad deep inside,” she says. “That’s going to be new for me: showing up and actually meaning it when I smile.”

“I Needed a Fresh Start”

Studio 6A, where The Kelly Clarkson Show now films, is the former home of late-night programs hosted by David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, and Jimmy Fallon. Fallon now shoots The Tonight Show just across the hall.

“It’s funny. I never think that far ahead,” Clarkson says, talking about how, the other day, she ran into her friend Hayley Williams from Paramore in the hallway, not understanding why in the world her buddy was outside her studio. She was there to perform on The Tonight Show. “In my head, I was like, ‘What are you doing here?!’ I just forget that I’ll be running into people left and right in this space.”

The truth is that Clarkson was terrified to request that the show leave Los Angeles for New York. The show was a rare TV success story, thanks to the hard work of a lot of people who would be asked to uproot their lives. “It’s like, why would I ruin it, right?” she says. “Why would I change something, from a business standpoint? But personally, I was really not doing well, and had not been for years in that city. I knew I needed a fresh start, but I just didn’t want to come off as ungrateful.”

Every time she thought about having the conversation about the move, she’d end up “slapping my hand to my mouth” because she was too nervous. “But I’m a 41-year-old grown woman, and I’ve got to be able to be honest with my team.”

That Clarkson was having a rough time in Los Angeles was a surprise to those who worked closely with her, and they supported her. She was surprised by how quickly NBC did, too. “I think they were afraid I was gonna be like, ‘I want to shoot this in Montana’—which I would love to do, actually, but I didn’t think that was an option,” she says laughing. “So I said, ‘Can we try New York? Because I don’t know that I can stay here anymore, for my family, for me.’”

In June 2020, Clarkson filed for divorce from her husband, Brandon Blackstock, with whom she shares her children River and Remington. After a contentious two years, the exes reached a settlement in March 2022.

A hallmark of The Kelly Clarkson Show has always been the star’s emotional candor and the fast intimacy she achieves while talking with her guests. The trauma, anger, sadness, healing, triumph, and full range of emotions she experienced over that time make up the tapestry of feelings in Chemistry, the deeply personal album she released in June and named her Las Vegas residency after. (Clarkson tells Obsessed that she had originally planned a splashy spectacle for her Vegas show. “But then my life definitely took a major turn,” she says, laughing at the understatement. “And I made this record that did not fit that.”)

While, as her time hosting the show proves, Clarkson has never been shy about talking about her personal life, one can imagine, especially after listening to Chemistry, that it might be difficult to be expected to talk about such a difficult time.

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“It’s interesting: I did a really good job of smiling and showing up for work and compartmentalizing my personal life for a few years,” She says. “Because I was really unhappy. It was really hard. I just was never fully present. If I’m being completely honest, I don’t know that I was ever really fully present even from Season 1, because the struggle happens, obviously, before you end up getting divorced. There’s stuff happening before you make that announcement.”

This is the reset she’s been waiting for—the opportunity, as she says, to really mean it when she’s smiling on camera. Plus, “I think we like to find humor in the heartache as well.” Duda says she can already sense a difference in Clarkson’s energy: “She’s so happy.” New York has already been good for her and, Duda hopes, will also be good for the show. “This move kind of reenergized us.”

Everyone already has ideas on how to capitalize on the new location. Like Today does, Duda hopes to utilize the famous Plaza outside of 30 Rock for outdoor segments, as well as film in the building’s star-filled hallways. Obviously, there’s a huge opportunity to incorporate Broadway musicals into the show. “But why not a monologue from a hit play too?” Clarkson says. “Why not see that? Why are there parameters?”

That said, music will continue to be an integral part of the show. “Kellyoke,” of course, will continue to be a mainstay, though Halbert, who has been Clarkson’s music director for two decades, says “the challenge right now is to find songs that Kelly hasn’t already sung.” The “Songs & Stories” segment, a popular addition to the show in which artists like Garth Brooks and Pink spend an entire episode singing and chatting with Clarkson about their body of work, will continue as well, with Alanis Morissette already booked for Season 5. Halbert also thinks it would be fun to take advantage of New York City by finding buskers in the streets and bringing them onto the show.

While doing a daytime talk show with this much music is no easy feat—“I get a three-hour window with a band every week to learn six Kellyokes and 30 to 40 custom cues,” Halbert says—Clarkson says she loves that it’s what “separates us a little from the pack.”

And even with just a week of tapings in New York under her belt, she’s already happy with how comfortable her “fresh start” feels. “Everyone in this building, a lot of them are people known for over 20 years of coming in and out of this building,” she says. “There was this camaraderie even before we shot our first episode. That’s the vibe of 30 Rock for me, so it already feels like home.”

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