Thursday September 10, 2009

Ellen DeGeneres insists she won’t be mean to the contestants on American Idol – because she “hates” it when Simon Cowell is nasty.

“I’m not going to be mean, I hate when Simon is that mean,” Ellen, who is Idol’s new fourth judge, told Ryan Seacrest on his radio show Thursday. “You can be constructive and criticize somebody that’s helpful instead of mean spirited.”

Her qualifications for being a judge? “The people are the ones that choose the American Idol,” Ellen said. “Ultimately it doesn’t come down to some expert in the music industry, it comes down to everybody at home that says ‘that’s the person I relate to, that’s the person that I’m going to buy music from’.”

DeGeneres says she hopes Paula Abdul won’t mind that she’s replacing her. “I hope Paula is okay with it,” she said. “I don’t want anybody to think I took Paula’s job away.

“I feel like she was gone and then everybody was looking for somebody else, then I stepped in. I certainly don’t want to be that person that is the evil taking Paula’s job away.”

The next season of American Idol begins in January.

Tags: american idol, ellen degeneres