Heavy/Getty Kelly Clarkson revealed to Conan O'Brien that she does not leave voicemails
Kelly Clarkson found fame and fortune with her iconic singing voice, but the original “American Idol” says she hates her speaking voice so much that she won’t leave a voicemail for anyone.
Comedian Conan O’Brien was shocked by her admission during an interview on his Team Coco podcast on June 22, 2023, during which he and his co-hosts — his assistant Sona Movsesian and producer Matt Gourley– talked with the superstar about her rise to fame and new album, chemistry.
Kelly Clarkson Says She Can’t Handle the Sound of Her Own Talking Voice
During their podcast conversation, Clarkson and O’Brien said they’d both gone back to watch the first time they met, when she was a guest on his popular late night show in 2003, months after her win on “American Idol.”
“I watched the clip of it this morning and I was freaked out,” O’Brien told her. “The first thing that struck me is you are a kid. You’re like a child. You come out and then I’m an 11 year old girl!”
Mocking himself in a screechy, high-pitched voice, he added, “I’m just so young, too, and I’m like ‘Hi it’s Kelly Clarkson everybody!'”
‘That’s how I felt like my voice sounded,” Clarkson interjected. “It was right after ‘Idol’ and I was so excited. Like, in love with him.”
“It was 20 years ago,” she continued, “but I had to turn it off ’cause my voice was … you hate your own voice, like your talking voice. Like, I don’t leave voicemails. I hate my talking voice.”
“Wait a minute,” O’Brien stopped her. “To the degree that you don’t leave a voicemail?”
“I never leave a voicemail,” Clarkson confirmed.
Gourley quipped, “How do you feel about being on a podcast?”
“Here’s why I’m okay with this show,” Clarkson explained. “And here’s why I’m okay with my talk show or any show I do ’cause I don’t watch them or listen to myself back. Because I’m in it, experience it — we were actually just discussing this. I never watch myself.”
Clarkson then turned to the audience and said, “Do you like your voice? Nobody really does, right?”
Clarkson, who will kick off the fifth season of “The Kelly Clarkson Show” this fall, told “Entertainment Tonight” in 2020 that she couldn’t watch her show.
“I can’t watch it because I hate watching me, but people seem to like it,” she said. “I saw the very first episode and then I was like, ‘Out,’ because it’s weird watching yourself.”
Kelly Clarkson is Moving Her Talk Show to Conan O’Brien’s Former TV Studio in New York
NBCCarole Burnett appeared with Kelly Clarkson on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” in April 2023
Clarkson may not watch her popular daytime talk show, but she is moving the entire production to New York this summer, with plans to unveil a “new state-of-the-art studio” at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, according to Variety. The show will be taped in front of studio audience in Studio 6A, which has been home to late-night shows hosted by Jimmy Fallon, Conan O’Brien, and David Letterman.
In May, Clarkson told Nancy O’Dell on “Talk Shop Live” that she knew it was time to move from Los Angeles to New York, and was willing to quit her talk show to do so if she had to. She said the decision to move her kids — seven-year-old son Remington “Remy” Alexander and eight-year-old daughter River Rose — cross-country was “100 percent my idea, and it was really cool NBC backed me.”
“I feel like our family — like me and my kids — really needed a fresh start,” she said. “We could not get it here (in L.A.) and there was just hurdle after hurdle with things and I was like, ‘You know what? I gotta go East Coast.’”
Clarkson’s gone through several challenging years personally, including her difficult divorce from her ex-husband, Brandon Blackstock, and wanted to be closer to her family who lives on the east coast.
“Obviously, we’ve been very successful, and I love everybody I work with, and we have such great relationships,” Clarkson told O’Dell. “So I talked to them because I was like, ‘Guys I need you to know what’s happening. It’s either I’m not going to be able to continue with the show, or I got to go East Coast.’”