Kyle Sandilands has defended the lack of diversity amongst the newly announced judging panel for Australian Idol, saying that ensuring there’s a balanced representation isn’t “how the real world works”.
On Wednesday, Channel 7 announced six famous faces to host and judge the revival of the reality show. Harry Connick Jr., Meghan Trainor, Kyle Sandilands and Amy Shark were revealed to be the judges and Ricki-Lee and Scott Tweedie as the show’s hosts.
The announcement of six white stars on the show received backlash on social media over the lack of diversity. However, Kyle has defended the show’s choices and said that he doesn’t think shows should hire people based on their background, sexuality or nationality.
“You can’t say, ‘one judge has got to be a non-binary black person’. That’s not how the real world works. And it shouldn’t,” Kyle said.
He continued “It should be whoever is worthy of doing it – gay, straight, black, white, non-binary, whatever – that’s not taken into consideration and it shouldn’t be.”
“That’s how we went wrong in the first place. That’s how hate started. ‘That guy, don’t hire him; he’s gay’. That’s how hate starts,” he continued. Maybe send whoever says that to HR and hire the hypothetical gay guy anyway?!”
Australian Idol ran for seven seasons from 2003 – 2009 with Ian Dickson, Marcia Hines and Mark Holden as judges and Osher Günsberg and James Mathison as hosts. It will be revived in 2023 with the new judges and hosts.
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“Idol is the granddaddy of them all,” Angus Ross, Seven’s Director of Programming shared in a statement with 7NEWS. “The biggest show in the world comes to Seven in 2022, and we know Australians are going to love it.”
Australian Idol launched the careers of some of the brightest names in Australian music, like Guy Sebastian, Jessica Mauboy, Casey Donovan, Stan Walker and Shannon Noll.
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