After a seven-year hiatus, Mel B. is back on America’s Got Talent for Season 20 (she appeared on the Fantasy League spinoff in 2024, but has not been on the main show since Season 13). Earlier this month, the Spice Girls singer revealed on the Today show that she “got kind of laid off and fired” from the show, and confirms to TV Insider, “Simon [Cowell] fired me! He said he didn’t, but he did!”
However, she still decided to return to the judges’ table alongside Cowell, Howie Mandel, and Sofia Vergara. “The last time I did it, I was in a very different place,” Mel explains. “I was dealing with a very emotionally abusive marriage that was falling apart. My dad had died. There was a lot going on for me, but one thing that actually [was] my savior was that I got to be at that desk every day.”
The entertainer admits she was “living a double, separate life” the last time she was on AGT, so she jumped at the chance to come back now that she’s in a better place. “It’s much more of a feel-good effect,” she gushes. “A lot’s happened to me in those six, seven years. I have my book out. I didn’t know if it was going to ruin my career or what. I finally got to buy my own home. I’m getting married. It couldn’t have been better timing, almost where you go, ‘Is this too good to be true?'”
This will be the first time Mel serves as a judge with Vergara, who joined the show in Season 15 after Mel’s departure. The ladies hadn’t even met before their first day of filming.
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“I’m like, ‘I’ve never met you before, and there’s cameras here, so I hope you’re a girls’ girl, because if not, this is not gonna go down well,'” Mel recalls. “And fortunately, she was. She’s quite a big personality, and I am, too, so that could’ve clashed, but I’ve been around four girls since I was 17 years old. I know every kind of girl and how to deal with them. I’m like, ‘Oh, please, I hope she’s a good one.'”
There were few reservations, though, because Mel knew that she and Vergara both got along with Heidi Klum (Klum was an AGT judge with Mel B from Seasons 8 to 13, and then with Vergara from Seasons 15 to 19).
The Modern Family star has similar sentiments to share about her new co-judge. “I was very happy working with Heidi, we became very close friends and we had a lot of chemistry, so of course, at the beginning [with Mel], I’m like, ‘Oh, no, a new person,'” she admits. “I had never done AGT without Heidi and the same group, so when you bring in someone new, I did feel like, ‘Oh, I hope this works out for me.’ But from the moment [Mel] arrived, it was perfect.”
Continuing to sing her praises, Vergara adds, “I also realized that she’s had so much experience doing this. She knows Simon very well, she knows Howie, she knows how the show works, so it was very easy. It was a very easy transition and we’ve been having a lot of fun from the beginning.”
Cowell admits that Mel is the “most unpredictable person” he’s ever worked with, but points out that she “hasn’t changed” from the first day he met her, which was before the Spice Girls blew up. “She knew the band was going to be huge,” he says. “And without being cocky, she had this confidence, and confidence in what she likes and what she doesn’t like. She’s not afraid to show it. She cannot be swayed.”
America’s Got Talent, Season 20 Premiere, Tuesday, May 27, 8/7c, NBC
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