ENTERTAINMENTSimon Cowell 'Genuinely' Thought 'Britain's Got Talent' Contestant Was Trying to 'Kill' Him Before Safety Team 'Stopped' Audition
Simon Cowell insisted the safety team 'saved my life.'
Simon Cowell feared for his life during a recent Britain's Got Talent taping.
In a new interview, the TV judge recalled a terrifying audition in which he laid on the ground blindfolded while a man whacked watermelons right next to his head.
Simon Cowell thought a 'Britain's Got Talent' contestant was trying to kill him.
"It’s that feeling when you kind of think somebody doesn't want you on the show anymore. It was that. It was the closest, genuinely, where I'm thinking, 'they actually want to kill me,'" the dad-of-one insisted during a press day for the upcoming season. "And I swear to God, that's how I felt because this guy got really nervous and he'd slipped and was shaking as he was smashing these watermelons."
The star said the safety team 'saved my life' when they stopped the audition.
Fortunately, the health and safety teams stopped the audition.
"Thank God, they saved my life," the American Idol alum, 65, confessed. "When you’re up there, you’re immersed in it and then you go home and think, ‘that s--- is dark, I nearly got killed twelve times.'"
"Even with St. John's Ambulance — I don't know what they would've done — but in the wings it was so precarious because it was melon they were smashing, so the water was everywhere," costar Amanda Holden, 53, added. "Any kind of safety that there must have been was out the window. It was very hard to watch."
Fellow judge Alesha Dixon, 46, felt the same, spilling, "We were genuinely worried. I realized how much I cared about you, Simon!"
"Please don't do that again," she begged. "It is funny though, the hardest acts to watch end up being the most entertaining to watch back."
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Cowell's costars admitted the stunt 'was hard to watch.'
Cowell agreed it will be entertaining to see, sharing, "We do have kids in the audience and I'm always looking behind going, 'Do they like it?' And actually, yeah, they do."
The British star had another life-threatening incident after he broke his back in a bike crash in 2020.
"It could have been a lot worse. When I saw the X-ray, I really nearly could have smashed my spine to pieces," he revealed in an interview. "So, I literally wouldn’t have been able to walk. I knew I’d broken my back the minute I landed. It was really, really kind of sudden and it hurt."
Cowell admitted he was "embarrassed" to come back home to son Eric, now 11, after surgery "looking about 100 because I couldn’t walk, and I have these metal rods in my back and these screws."
The dad-of-one suffered a life-threatening injury when he crashed his bike in 2020.
"I said [to fiancée Lauren Silverman], ‘Lauren, I just don’t know how to explain it to [Eric].’ She obviously said something to him because he came in… and I was lying in bed and he said, ‘Daddy, you’re like Ironman,’ and I thought that was the sweetest thing and it meant a lot," he raved.
The Mirror reported on Cowell and his costars' comments about the ordeal.
