Editor’s note: Crystal Bowersox will be performing tonight.
“American Idol” producers have yet to make a final decision regarding the fate of ailing season 9 semifinalist Crystal Bowersox, whose medical issues resulted in a last-minute swap that has the show’s remaining female semifinalists performing tonight, instead of yesterday, as originally scheduled.
“The doctors are meeting at this moment — this morning — and will make a decision a bit little later on in the day,” “Idol” executive producer Ken Warwick explained in an interview on Ryan Seacrest’s Los Angeles-based radio show a little while ago. “She did have a condition that we know about, but how bad it is yet, we still don’t know.”
A Fox spokesperson declined comment on Bowersox’s status; a call to 19 Entertainment was not immediately returned.
After the jump, the transcript of Seacrest’s Q&A with Warwick. (Audio here.) –Additional reporting by Sandra Gonzalez
Ryan Seacrest: What happened?
Ken Warwick: Actually I was in the shower about 8 o’clock yesterday morning and I suddenly got the phone call that Crystal had been taken to hospital and I thought “Yeah, is she going to be okay? What’s the problem?” And I found out actually within an hour that it was worse than we expected, and she was going to be in the hospital all day. And then we had a decision to make as to whether or not we were going to try to put the show together without her, what the fan issues would be. Could we take maybe a pre-recording she’d made in rehearsal that we could package together so people could vote? Could I show one from last week and get people to vote? Or was that it for her, which normally is the situation. If you’re in the Olympics and you’re going for the semifinal for the final, if you don’t turn up …
Seacrest: Then you’re out.
Warwick: …you don’t go straight through to the final. So it was a difficult decision to make. We came to the conclusion really that the fairest thing to do overall — because I’ve got three of four other girls who got sniffles and the flu — that if the boys were okay with it, we put the boys on [yesterday] and the girls on tonight.
Seacrest: Can you talk about what she has or what happened to her?
Warwick: We’re not really sure yet, Ryan. She did have a condition that we know about, but how bad it is yet, we still don’t know. The doctors are meeting at this moment — this morning — and will make a decision a bit little later on in the day.
Seacrest: At this moment you don’t know if she’s going to be in or out, but you could find out at any moment?
Warwick: I hopefully will know by midday, but not until then.
Seacrest: What happens then? God forbid she’s out of the competition. What do we do?
Warwick: If she’s out of the competition, it would probably be that we only eliminate one girl this week.
Seacrest: So eliminate one on Thursday night. A tough thing because you’re in a competition like this and then all of the sudden something happens that’s maybe out of your control…
Warwick: You go through all your life singing, hoping, waiting for your break, then this comes along and it will go sour, which is an awful shame.