Simon Cowell has spoken for the first time about the controversy created by Natalia Kills on the New Zealand version of his show, ‘The X Factor’.
Natalia and her husband, Willy Moon, were sacked from the judging panel of the show after laying into a contestant during a live show, alleging that he’d completely copied Willy’s style for his performance.
Willy Moon and wife Natalia Kills were sacked over the scandal
Natalia told the contestant he “made her sick”, while Willy compared him to the ‘Psycho’ character Norman Bates, adding: “I feel like you’re going to stitch someone’s skin to your face and then go out and kill everyone in the audience.”
And you thought we Louis Walsh banging on about “the likeability factor” was a turn-off…
Simon, who has judged on both the UK and American versions of the show, has now had his say on what he described as the couple’s “hateful” critiques.
Simon Cowell
He tells the Daily Mail: “It didn't even make sense… she sounded mad.
“Where they cocked up was that they didn't apologise straight away. If they'd both been genuinely sorry and called me, and apologised to the guy and his family, who knows what could have happened? They didn't. They were quite defensive.”
Natalia and Willy were both sacked from the panel after the clip of them went viral, to be replaced by Rogue Traders singer Natalie Bassingthwaite and Shelton Woolright of I Am Giant.
They later issued an apology statement... though it was noticeably lacking the word 'sorry', which we reckon is pretty important when you're meant to be apologising to someone you've publicly humiliated.
Or maybe we're just old-fashioned like that...