The sensation of summer reality comes back with several new faces for its 14th season. Gabrielle Union and Julianne Hough join the judges’ panel with Simon Cowell and Howie Mandel, taking over Heidi Klum and Mel B. Meanwhile, Terry Crews replaces Tyra Banks as the host of the show.
“America’s Got Talent” has many cast changes for Season 14. According to judge Simon Cowell, his participation in a dangerous audition almost made him an unplanned departure.
“I was one inch away from being killed,” he said. “I’m not going to go into details of how bad it was, but you’ll see.”
Cowell says change is a necessary part of a long-running show and the departures are not meant as a comment on their ability to judge and host. Those who leave are busy with other projects, he says, as Mel B has a Spice Girls reunion tour, Klum is working with Tim Gunn on a new Amazon show and Banks has been “always going to be a one- or two-year deal.”
Cowell is mostly mum about the on-stage talent this year, although he says Kodi Lee, a young blind and autistic singer and piano player (was featured in a recent promo trailer for the show) “was amazing. I hope the audience will love him and I think they’ll.”
There is also a competitor called the Human Fuse who is set on fire while wearing a protective suit and launched into the air via a structure of a catapult type.
“I thought he was brilliant,” says Cowell before confessing his fascination with so-called acts of danger. “A part of me wants to do it as well. I’ve just got this thing in me at the moment where I want to do dangerous stunts.”
That’s not likely to happen, for obvious reasons. “The (show’s) insurance company would have a heart attack about it,” he says. “But I was half-tempted.”
