“Look at me Meryl Streep this s–t.”
So says Kelly Clarkson midway through the taping of the last-ever episode of her eponymous daytime talk show. It’s a Friday afternoon in early June, and Gold Derby is sitting among the fan-filled studio audience that’s been invited to attend The Kelly Clarkson Show‘s grand finale, which won’t air for the general public until Aug. 31. So far, the Emmy-winning host hasn’t let the emotions of the day get to her, even as we’ve passed the two-and-a-half hour mark of what will be distilled down to a one-hour farewell for its daytime slot.
But the mood 30 Rock’s famed Studio 6A has noticeably shifted in the last few minutes after an audience member named Jeremy — who hosts the Clarkson-themed podcast “Miss Indepodcast” — stands up to explain why he’s asking Clarkson to perform a specific song on this special “By Request” farewell — a mini-concert where a diverse cross-section of her longtime fans have been invited to choose the set list.
Jeremy’s tune of choice is Clarkson’s 2015 anthem “Piece by Piece,” the title track of her seventh studio album, and like everyone in the room, he has a personal connection to his selection. Speaking directly to the host, he describes being abandoned by his father at a young age and raised by a single mom, a story that clearly resonates with Clarkson, who has often spoken — and, in the specific case of “Piece by Piece,” sung about — the impact of her own parents’ divorce on her childhood. Jeremy then drops the emotional motherlode: his mom recently passed away and he hopes that “Piece by Piece” will be a triumphant eulogy for her.
Cue the waterworks. “You’re gonna have to wait a minute,” Clarkson — openly weeping now — tells her crew as the cameras cut and the teleprompter containing her scripted response stops scrolling. “I can’t say this s–t yet.”
Murmurings of encouragement from Jeremy and the studio audience are heard as Clarkson works through her tears, invoking Streep as her spirit animal to guide her back to camera-readiness. The teleprompter resets, and the host takes a moment for one final Kleenex-assisted eye dab before the cameras start to roll on her rendition of “Piece by Piece.”
Gold Derby would like to report that her performance is the near-flawless version you’ll see on the broadcast version of the finale, but in fact that’s the second take. Midway through her first attempt, Clarkson calls cut, realizing that she forgot to put her earpiece back into place after her crying jag. “I have to bury all my emotions,” she tells the audience, before gesturing at where Jeremy’s sitting and adding: “And I’m not gonna look anywhere over there.”
Second time’s the charm as Clarkson nails “Piece by Piece,” and the audience breaks into wild applause. The host cues up the next segment and tosses to commercial; when the cameras are off, she finally allows Jeremy back into her field of vision and the two close the loop on their shared emotional moment. To put it in Streep terms, it’s giving Anne Hathaway and Meryl at the end of The Devil Wears Prada — the O.G. entry, not the latter-day sequel.
Speaking with Gold Derby months after the taping, Clarkson’s producer and showrunner, Alex Duda, tells us that the Meryl Streep line is a vintage Kelly-ism that was heard quite a lot on set. “The other thing she likes to say when she cries is, ‘Listen, I can’t cry pretty like Rachel McAdams,'” Duda reveals with a laugh. “We all know Kelly so well, and what’s fun about her is that when she misspeaks or makes a mistake, she’ll just roll with it. It’s just part of her personality, and we love that about her.”
Sometimes those mistakes would make it into the final cut, but for the series finale, Duda and Clarkson both felt that only happy, not sad, tears should be shed, which is why the host called cut after Jeremy’s revelation. “Our goal with the finale was to make it a thank you to fans, so she wanted to take a moment before going on,” the showrunner says now. “We’ve all experienced loss, and you never know when those emotions are going to hit you. But we wanted that celebration to belong to the fans and have them help us say goodbye.”
As Clarkson has said in pre-finale interviews and reiterates on the day, it’s very much her choice to leave. Certainly, The Kelly Clarkson Show has been a hit for NBCUniversal, notching 24 Daytime Emmy wins across its seven season run, and 11 nominations for this last season. And it still attracts a bevy of big-name guests still looking for couch space in the midday hours, from Tina Fey and Will Forte to Jennifer Lopez and Brett Goldstein, all of whom swung by Studio 6A during the final week of taping.
As it happens, Clarkson’s reasons for bringing the curtain down on her show are sitting in the studio audience — her two kids, River and Remy. For the final segment, both children join her in front of the cameras as the screen behind them display pictures of their younger selves from when the series began in 2019. Clarkson tells them that she’s looking forward to being able to spend more time with them now that the show is over, and quizzes them on their favorite moments from the past seven years. Remy calls out the time he got to meet Jason Momoa, while River says she loved any chance she had to see her mom sing live.
Embracing her kids and looking back to camera, Clarkson tells viewers, “I loved being in your homes each day.” The audience rises to its feet, while the crew clusters in around the edges of the frame, getting ready for the post-show slew of pictures.
And with that, The Kelly Clarkson Show is officially over and done. But here are some of the other moments you didn’t see on television.
Barefoot in 30 Rock
Clarkson’s penchant for hosting her show sans shoes has been noted before — sometimes by guests! — and true to form, she’s barefoot from the moment she takes the stage for the final episode. “She’s always sung that way,” Duda says later. “Even when she was coming up as a recording artist, she’d kick off her shoes, because she feels that it plants you and grounds you.”
While Clarkson warms up her voice, the studio audience is told that the final Kellyoke segment, where the host covers a hit song, was taped earlier in the week, so we’ll only be watching and hearing the five songs that her fans have requested. But no one’s complaining; after all, as the show’s resident hypeman, Rubin Ervin, reminded us earlier in the day: “You’re going to hear Kelly Clarkson sing for free.” (His other piece of advice? “Don’t look crazy,” when the camera finds you in the audience.)
Clarkson then reveals to the crowd that the last-ever Kellyoke was a cover of “Golden,” the Grammy- and Oscar-winning KPop Demon Hunters anthem. “It was so hard to hit those high notes,” the singer confesses seconds before the cameras start recording her official welcome.
Duda later notes that “Golden” was the most-requested Kellyoke in the show’s history, which made it the perfect song to end on. “That’s why we called the finale, ‘By Request,'” she adds.
Prompter and prepared
After performing the first fan-picked song — the high school dance staple “Since U Been Gone” — Clarkson uses the break between segments to record a final series of promos of already-taped, but yet-to-air episodes. “I’m going to sound like a sexy robot,” she warns the crowd as she starts to read the scripted promo banter off the teleprompter.
It quickly appears that winging it might have been the better way to go. One piece of patter salutes a longtime Kelly Clarkson Show crew member, but Clarkson mangles the person’s name and members of the production staff chime in to correct her. “It’s spelled that way on the teleprompter,” the host insists and a closer inspection reveals that the name is, indeed, misspelled.
But a later snafu is all on Clarkson; teasing a July 1 episode featuring Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown, she incorrectly identifies her guest as “Millie Brown,” which is spelled properly in the teleprompter. “F–k me,” Clarkson says, breaking into laughter before saying that it’s a good thing these are her final batch of promos. Fortunately, the last few promos — with such easier to remember/spell names as Rob Lowe — are pronounced error-free and we’re on to the second song of the afternoon, “Sober.”
“Anybody who got to come and see the show knows that there’s a whole other show that happens behind the scenes,” Duda says of those hilarious in-studio flubs. “Those moments happen because Kelly is so real, and that goes back to why she’s a good host. The best hosts know who they are and are comfortable in their own skin. And that’s her.”
New song alert
In addition to the fan favorite requests featured on the final episode, Clarkson set aside time to debut her latest single, “I’d Be Lyin’,” which won’t be released to the general public until July. In fact, when we hear it in early June, the song hasn’t even been recorded yet, which is why it takes the singer and her cheekily named band, My Band Y’all, a little while to find their groove. “This is our first time performing our song on TV,” Clarkson apologetically tells the crowd as she and the musicians problem-solve in real time.
The host also reveals that “I’d Be Lyin'” is a new title; the song was originally called “If I Said I Do,” which riffs on a key lyric in the chorus: “I’d be lyin’ if I said I do.” And yes, “I do” refers to wedding vows, although the song is definitely not intended for that particular venue. “If you played this at a wedding, you’d be messed up,” Clarkson says, only semi-jokingly.
Speaking of messy, it takes Clarkson and the band three tries to come up with a version of the song they’re happy with. “Do I look crazy?” she asks the crowd with a grin after one blown take found her powering through the song even as the tempo veered wildly off-track. “I knew something was off, but I was gonna go for it because I’m a professional.”
“I was so excited that that was the first time they played that song together,” Duda tells us now, adding that there was no Plan B in case Clarkson and the band couldn’t problem solve their way through the tune. “I always loved watching them work out the songs together, and they usually get there in the end. Sometimes she’d change the song and strip it back, and it becomes something different, like when she did “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. That was really haunting and good.”
A moment like this
While the studio audience was ushered out just as the farewell pictures began, Duda fills us in on what happened next. “It was just a big love-fest,” she recalls. “Everybody was hugging and taking pictures, and we did a big class photo of the whole team before we went to a party that Kelly threw for us. It was cathartic and nice to all be together.”
Clarkson declined to make any big speeches at the wrap party, feeling she said what she wanted to say to the crew on set. “She wanted to thank everyone in the moment,” Duda says. “The party was really just a chance to have fun; everyone was bowling and eating snacks.”
As for Clarkson’s next act, the showrunner says that the singer really is focusing on being a mom for now. But she doesn’t rule out the possibility of future TV specials or other projects, noting that the host will have no trouble securing post-daytime opportunities when she wants them. “It’s hard to say good by to a hit show after seven seasons, but I’m so proud of what we did and I believe the best thing we all can do is carry forward with what we learned and put it into what we build next,” Duda emphasizes. “We saw our role as being a helper, like Mister Rogers always said.”
Funnily enough, The Kelly Clarkson Show is signing off exactly 25 years to the day after the series finale of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Informed of that connection, Duda marvels at the quarter century kismet. “We once did a whole hour about Mister Rogers, and the Kellyoke was “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” she says. “We feel good about what we did in daytime and while things are changing, there’s always going to be space for somebody like Kelly who has an interesting voice. So we’ll see what happens next.”
