Jennifer Lopez was warned not to join American Idol: Going to be reduced to just a reality star

Jennifer Lopez admitted she took a career risk when she became a judge on “American Idol.”The “Dance Again” singer, 55, looked back on the time she spent working on the Fox singing competition series in a conversation with comedian Nikki Glaser for Interview Magazine.“I’ll do things that could be risky because I believe that they’re going to turn out OK.I’d done all these big movies and made these albums and now they’re asking me to do reality TV,” said Lopez, who sat at the judges’ table on the show from 2011 to 2016.“I’ve had kids and I haven’t worked for a couple of years,” she continued. “‘American Idol’ was a big show at the time.

It really comes down to, ‘What do I think I can bring to something?’ When all of my advisers were like, ‘Don’t do this, you’re going to be reduced to just a reality star.'” Lopez explained that, at the time, doing “American Idol” or any other reality show “was looked down upon.”“‘Don’t do that or nobody will ever hire you for a movie ever again,'” she recalled her team telling her at that point in her career, adding, “And I was just like, ‘No.I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen.

I think I have something to contribute.'”Lopez went on, “I love music and I love mentoring people, and I wanted to share the things that I knew about the business.So it became more about, ‘What do I think I can do with this?’ When I’m choosing things, even if they seem like not the best idea to everybody else, if I feel it in my gut that it’s the right thing to do, nobody can talk me out of it.”“It’s the same thing when I went to Vegas,” she said, referring to her Sin City residency at Planet Hollywood that ran from 2016 to 2018.

“They were like, ‘That’s where entertainers go to die.’ And I was like, ‘No.’ And it launched me into a whole new part of my life.”Lopez was a judge on “American Idol” alongside Randy Jackson and Steven Tyler, a...