SIMON Cowell has hit back at claims his Netflix show The Next Act was staged after putting together new boyband December 10.
This week December 10 – made up of Cruz, 19, Danny, 16, Hendrick, 19, John 17, Josh, 17, Nicolas, 16 and Sean, 19 – released their first music video.
And creator Simon, 66, was forced to deny allegations the show that put them together was set up.
During an appearance on The Rest is Entertainment podcast, host Richard Osman told him: “What I thought I was going to watch was something with a bit more authenticity if that makes sense.
“You’re so brilliant at controlling narrative and understanding what people want and understanding how to give it to them.
“I wondered if you execing that show meant that we missed out on some genuine authenticity, as I felt a number of times where you were saying ‘oh this is a big problem, oh I don’t know what’s gonna happen here’ and I thought ‘I think you do know what’s going to happen here’.”
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But Simon hit back: “No, Richard… pinky promise I didn’t. Absolutely didn’t. I was in a bit of a bubble, I had a gut feeling that we had to check the numbers.
“I promise you it was all genuine, what you see is what happened. And there weren’t any second takes.”
But Richard’s co-host Marina Hyde questioned why ‘bad’ auditions were included, in the style of Simon’s The X Factor.
She said: “But then why did we see some rather unfortunate less talented people?
“Much in the way we always used to, in that sort of slight X Factor theatre of cruelty way, where we just laugh at them and you get to be rude to them.”
“By the time of the edit, perhaps you didn’t have to show the unfortunate untalented ones at all.”
However Simon insisted both good and bad performers were the reality of the audition process.
He said: “But that is the reality with auditions, I’ve always gone with about half a percent of the people you see are gonna be good.
“So there were some not so good people. So I guess it was a decision to show the people that turned up and some of them weren’t very good.”