Ryan Seacrest says his American Idol Mount Rushmore would be rooted in the show’s beginning: the original team, the original panel and the original winner. Speaking Friday at the UCLA Jonsson Cancer Center Foundation’s 29th Annual Taste for a Cure, where he was the host, Seacrest told PauseRewind’s Kevin Zelman that he would probably keep it old school.
“Well it’d probably be the original team,” Seacrest said. “The original panel. The original winner. Maybe throw Carrie [Underwood] in there too since she’s with us now. But you gotta go OG on Mount Rushmore.”
American Idol debuted almost 25 years ago, and Seacrest was there from the start. The original judging panel featured Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell, while Kelly Clarkson became the show’s first winner in the history-making first-ever results show. Seacrest said, “We had such a great time. It all started 25 years ago almost now.”
What has changed most, he said, is not the format but the faces. “The biggest change is the group of contestants every year. You get a new cast of characters, a new cast of voices, you don’t quite know who’s going to excel, who’s going to make it the distance. And that’s always the highlight for me,” he said. The competition has evolved over the years, switching networks, changing judges and shifting the way singers are presented, but Seacrest’s view of the show remains tied to the people it introduces.
He also pointed to the first results show as the moment that still stands above the rest. “So many great performances, the contestants used to do those big medleys together, [but] I think when I look back, the history-making first-ever results show where I got to say ‘The winner is Kelly Clarkson,’ that will never ever get old,” Seacrest said. That memory, and the original roster around him, is the answer to the question he was asked on Friday: if American Idol has a Mount Rushmore, it starts where the show itself started.