Ryan Seacrest Names Original Idol Team for Mount Rushmore
Ryan Seacrest used a Friday appearance at the UCLA Jonsson Cancer Center Foundation’s 29th Annual Taste for a Cure to name his American Idol Mount Rushmore. Speaking with PauseRewind’s Kevin Zelman, the longtime host said the show’s original team belongs on it, along with Kelly Clarkson and possibly Carrie Underwood.
Taste for a Cure at UCLA
“Well it’d probably be the original team,” Seacrest said at the event. He added, “The original panel. The original winner. Maybe throw Carrie [Underwood] in there too since she’s with us now. But you gotta go OG on Mount Rushmore.”
That list points straight back to the show’s early core: Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell as the original judges, with Clarkson as the first winner named on the first-ever results show. Seacrest was there from the beginning, and that long run is the reason his answer lands as more than nostalgia.
25 Years of Idol
“We had such a great time. It all started 25 years ago almost now,” Seacrest said while reflecting on the franchise. He also said the biggest change over the years has been the yearly rotation of contestants: “You get a new cast of characters, a new cast of voices, you don’t quite know who’s going to excel, who’s going to make it the distance. And that’s always the highlight for me,” he said.
The framing is simple enough: after almost 25 years, Seacrest is still treating American Idol as a living roster, not a fixed memory. That makes the original panel and Clarkson the obvious anchors for his version of the show’s peak era, while Underwood’s current role gives the list a small present-day update without changing the retro logic behind it.
Kelly Clarkson’s First Results Show
Seacrest pointed to one moment he says never gets old: the first-ever results show, when he announced, “The winner is Kelly Clarkson.” For a franchise that has cycled through casts and formats, that remains the cleanest proof of what the show still sells best — not the judges, but the reveal.
At this point, Seacrest’s Mount Rushmore doubles as a business argument about the series’ identity. The original panel and Clarkson are the names most tied to the show’s launch, and his remarks suggest that any future version of American Idol still has to measure itself against that opening run.
