Simon Cowell on the search for a boyband and talks family life

Simon Cowell talks in-depth about the ups and downs of his search for a new boyband for his Netflix Show Simon Cowell: The Next Act. ‘I’m prob­ably more proud of this than any­thing else, just because we kept going and we were OK with show­ing everything.’

The search certainly did not start well for Simon and hais team, talking to Weekend magazine Simon had hoped for 1000 boys turning up at the audition but in reality only 93 registered their interest.

Photo Credit: NICKY JOHNSTON - Simon Cowell at home with his dogs Squiddly, Diddly and Binky

His team then realised the radio interviews and billboards were not catching the young people they were aiming for. They suggested advertising on Tiktok which worked, with queues forming outside the audi­tions in Liv­er­pool, Dub­lin, Lon­don.

Simon also talks about when he heard Liam Payne had died ‘I was in Black­pool film­ing Bri­tain’s Got Tal­ent. Some­body who works with me came into my room,’ Simon says now, talk­ing pub­licly about this period for the first time. ‘As soon as I saw her face, I could see she was upset.

Noth­ing has affected me like that since I lost my mum and dad. I remem­ber how that felt and this was not far off.’ The emo­tions return and so do the tears. All I remem­ber was say­ing, “I’ve got to speak to his par­ents.” I man­aged to speak to them, thank God. Imme­di­ately.’ ‘It was Just hor­rific. I put myself in their pos­i­tion. They were in pieces. I was in pieces. I just said, “Look, we’ve just got to be there for each other.”’

Simon spoke about how he met up with Liam the year before, they chatted about general things and Liam's son. ” There was noth­ing that made me think, “S**t, there’s a prob­lem.” I didn’t get that. That’s why [his death was such a shock to me.’

Talking about his relationship with Lauren he says 'We are slightly kooky. That’s why we get on. I wind her up, she gets upset, we argue for a second then it’s gone. She just makes me laugh. Some­times she doesn’t even know why I’m laugh­ing so much.’

Lauren recently changed her surname legally to Cowell. Explaining why she felt it was the right thing to do, she said ‘Look, I am Mrs Cowell,’ adding, ‘I have created a life with Simon, we have a child together, we have a solid relationship.’

The name change, she says, was about aligning with Simon and Eric. ‘This is more about the unity of our family and us having the same name. When we discussed it, Simon said, “Yeah, I would really like you to change your name.” It wasn’t a dramatic statement, it was just: “This is who I am, and this is who we are.”

‘I kept Silverman for all those years because of Adam,’ she adds. ‘When I got divorced, I was going to go back to my maiden name. I thought that might be more appropriate because of how the marriage ended. But then I thought no, this is our son’s name, and so for his sake I kept it.’

Simon was asked if. he was worried about the pressure on the boys in. his new band. He admitted 'Your life changes. There is no pri­vacy. But they are going to be looked after.’

During the process he had to release four of the boys, which was dev­ast­at­ing to them. When asked if there were psy­cho­lo­gists on hand, ‘Yeah, a lot. Net­flix had a big team, they were very close to the boys. We were also get­ting advice from them. So with cer­tain boys we liked, we were basic­ally told, “I don’t think this boy is cap­able of deal­ing with what you’re gonna do.”’

Simon Cowell: The Next Act will show the process they boys went through to reach the final selection and a lot of footage with Simon and Lauren at home as a family.

Do not miss the first episode on Netflix Wednesday 10th Dectember