Will.i.am (14 page)

Once the performances began, Will noticed that there were, in fact, two performances going on at any given time. One was the singing of the song itself, the second was the performance of,
‘Oh, look at me! I’m going to be on TV’. This aspect of the show fascinated him but did not make
him any the more enamoured by the genre.

No contestant epitomized this dichotomy more than Katie Waissel. The polarizing drama queen of the entire series, Waissel broke down during her rendition of ‘Smile’, and generally
milked the entire audition for as much attention and theatre as she could get. Will, though, defended her to Cole. ‘She seems good’, he said. Of Gamu Nhengu, another controversial
contestant, he said ‘nice tone’. Cher Lloyd, like Waissel, had to interrupt her performance with a tearful breakdown. Will sat uncomfortably as Cole comforted Lloyd. Little could he
have known, at this stage, that Lloyd, who also messed-up her second crack at the song, would make it through to the final, where she would duet with him. ‘Wow’, he said after
Lloyd’s tearful, despairing exit. He tried to remind himself that the girl he had just seen in such torment was ‘sixteen years old’. His serious and deflated air was palpable. Had
his fears about the format been realized?

After the auditions had taken place, Will looked back over the experience. ‘It was cool, you know, it was harder than it looked,’ he told
The X Factor
website. ‘Cos
every single one of the girls were great singers.’ This created a difficult situation for Will as he advised Cole which of the acts to put through to the live shows, and which to send home.
He felt that – whatever the choices Cole and he had made – they
would be criticized by those watching at home. ‘It’s hard, you know – being judged
for judging.’ He added, though, that the decision was eased because ‘you just can’t ignore magic dust’. Cole added that Will’s advice had been ‘vital’. She
said that she ‘trusted his instinct ... above my own’.

However, for seasoned observers of Will it seemed that all was not quite well. The normally talkative and energetic man was replaced by one lacking ‘fizz’, a man who seemed almost
perplexed and deflated by the experience. It was hard to imagine at this stage that Will would soon be representing Cole as she herself was sucked further into the
X Factor
universe, only
to be embarrassingly spat out.

That episode took place over the Atlantic, where Simon Cowell was fulfilling a longstanding dream by leaving his place as a judge on Simon Fuller’s
American Idol
, in order to
launch his own
X Factor
franchise in the States. For Cowell, this was the biggest risk of his television career to date. His already notoriously obsessive attention to detail would be
tightened all the more. For him, getting the judging panel right for the show was absolutely vital.

It is Simon Cowell’s belief that
The X Factor
is more about the drama of the judges than it is about the contestants. So he wanted the perfect chemistry on the panel. Which is how
Will became embroiled in the hullabaloo, over Cowell’s invitation to Cole to be one of his fellow judges in America.

Having accepted the role, as Cole prepared to move to the States, Will joined her new management team. Cole arrived in America in May 2011. She was welcomed by Will and he
reportedly threw a party to introduce her to some of his key contacts. By August, having tired of life in hotels, Cole was reported to have moved into Will’s home in Hollywood. By this time
it was already clear that she was not entirely comfortable in the US.

Fate was already pointing towards a showdown between Will and Cowell over the former’s client. However, Will spoke in encouraging terms about both Cole and Cowell. He predicted that the UK
X Factor
show, which Cole and Cowell had left behind for the American launch, would struggle to replace either judge. ‘I don’t think there is much doubt that Simon and Cheryl
are the main two guys,’ he told the
Sun
. ‘Simon is the glue that holds everything together and people love to watch him, and Cheryl is like a queen in the UK. They are both
irreplaceable.’

He continued to be positive – glowingly so – about
The X Factor
, as the series he had made a cameo appearance in rolled on. ‘I love
X Factor
,’ he said.
The two acts he selected for praise were both in Cole’s category. For him, Cher Lloyd was the queen of the series, and he backed her to win. However, the pint-sized pop princess could only
manage fourth place. The highest finisher of Cole’s category was
Rebecca Ferguson, another act that Will had plenty of time for. ‘You’d think Rebecca was
hanging out with Marvin Gaye every day, she has so much soul,’ he said. ‘I would love to work with [Ferguson and Lloyd]. If I was starting off and went on that show, I’d never
make it through as the talent is of such a high standard.’

However, positive words about the franchise were about to leave Will’s vocabulary. Everything was about to go terribly wrong for Cole, and Will was about to be handed a crash course in
both the politics of the entertainment industry and the scale of that challenges that artists’ representatives can face. His client’s dream of cracking America as a judge on
The X
Factor
fell at the first hurdle.

During her first day as a judge, in the auditions in Los Angeles, Cole appeared lost. Her outfit and hairstyle was also criticized – with one wag comparing her look to that of
Star
Wars
creature Chewbacca. Over the next three days of auditions, Cole did not improve her form enough to deflect Cowell’s growing sense of unease. Cole seemed, said Cowell, later,
explaining her departure, ‘bewildered’. She was booed by the audience at one point, had minimal rapport with her fellow judges, and became tearful when she was asked to repeat herself.
It was all a world away from her reign on the UK show, on which she had appeared almost majestic.

As the decision was reached to replace Cole, Will was
thrust into the complex, tense and financially significant negotiations surrounding her removal from the series. Cole
had signed a £1.2 million contract to judge on the show, so the stakes were high as negotiations began.

Initially, according to Tom Bower’s biography of Simon Cowell, an offer was made to Cole – not through Will but another of her agents, Seth Friedman – of $2m to pay up her US
contract, and a further £2m to return to the UK
X Factor
. Cowell’s camp indicated they wanted a swift resolution. Friedman was then joined in the negotiations by Will. First,
he requested equity in the
X Factor
franchise for Cole, in addition to any other deal. Cowell responded that the equity was not his to offer, but instead offered to up her fee for the UK
series, include the potential for bonuses for ratings, and agreed to award her a credit as an executive producer of the series. As he put it, he was making a generous offer in order to resolve the
negotiation ‘cleanly and quickly’.

Will replied that he would go away for a while, ‘and consider other options’. According to Bower’s much-discussed biography of Simon Cowell, Will accused Cowell of undermining
Cole by reducing the volume of her microphone. According to Bower, Cowell felt that Will was ‘riding his own ego’, rather than working in the best interests of Cole. In turn, Will
insisted that the opposite was true.

When details of the episode were leaked to the TMZ website, Cowell complained: ‘Will doesn’t understand the pressures we’re under.’ While
Cowell’s aides complained that Will did not realize that they were trying to help him and Cole, Cowell said that he thought he and Will ‘had a good relationship’.

Cowell’s frustration with Will at this stage is understandable. Will’s client was being offered a lavish package. However, Will’s perspective should also be considered fairly.
His client had been enormously upset by her departure from the show. Having moved to America months ahead of the series, uprooting her life and replacing members of her team, she had been axed
after just four days in the new job. Furthermore, Will was aware that Cowell’s empire and the Fox television network were, between them, sitting on billions of dollars. Thus, it could be that
the opening offers made to Cole were not as generous as they might appear to the outside observer.

Will was determined to fight hard for his client and not to be cowed by the combined power of Cowell and Fox TV. His steadfast approach almost reaped a complete turnaround as, behind the scenes,
members of the Fox network and the Freemantle Media production company were actively lobbying for Cole to return to the US show as soon as possible. Freemantle’s Cecile Frot-Coutaz prepared
to contact Cole to invite her back, and Will to instruct him to take Cole to the American embassy in London to obtain a new work permit.

However, Will was not about to fall at their feet. He asked whether the offer for Cole to return was, in fact, a trick. He wondered whether he and Cole were being led into a situation whereby,
if she refused the offer, Team Cowell could refuse to pay her. Cowell was frustrated and asked Will whether Cole wanted to return or not. Will replied with an ambiguous: ‘That isn’t
your concern’. In the end the negotiations were concluded successfully, but with an agreement that did not include Cole’s return to either the American or UK
X Factor
show. For
now, at least, her professional relationship with Cowell was over, and she needed Will’s support more than ever.

Throughout the drama, Cole, usually comfortable with publicity, had remained publicly silent. Aside from some newspaper stories quoting ‘sources close to’ her – the
authenticity of which were open to debate – she had not said a word. Instead, it was Will who began the public ‘rehabilitation’ of his client. It was no surprise that, despite the
huge disappointment and ignominy Cole had suffered, Will spoke in optimistic terms. ‘She always comes back stronger, and she always comes back bigger,’ he told
Heat
magazine.
‘Cheryl has been through rougher things than
this, so this is going to be no problem for her.
The X Factor
is not the only way for Cheryl to break the US,
it’s not like it’s the only show on television.’

At this stage, relations between Will and Cowell were, certainly in public, still essentially warm. Asked if Cowell was to blame for Cole’s humiliating departure, Will resisted the
temptation to blame
The X Factor
boss alone. ‘It’s easy to imagine Simon as this one-man empire, but that’s not the case. He has people he needs to answer to and
sometimes his hands are going to be tied,’ said Will. It was a sentence that at once absolved and belittled Cowell. Given Will’s intelligence, one suspects this was not accidental.
However, he continued in more friendly terms, saying, ‘I can only tell you what I have seen first-hand: that’s a guy who deeply cares for her.’

Meanwhile, Will preferred to look to Cole’s future, predicting that in the months ahead she would be working with some top musical artists, including Rihanna, Katy Perry, Usher, ‘and
of course the Peas’.

His positivity over Cole’s future is classic Will, of course. Few celebrities are as powered by positivity as he is. From his childhood games in the playground at school, to his car-park
pep talk with Taboo, and onwards, Will has always radiated upbeat energy, and has also developed an almost Olympian skill at looking on the bright side of any situation. If you
ever find yourself in a troubled or despairing situation, you could do a lot worse than to run it past Will, whose mind seems to be a factory of bright-side perspectives.

These powers are mostly to be applauded, of course. However, in the case of Cole’s
X Factor
failure, his ‘silver lining’ of that particular cloud stretches
credibility. For Cole, this had been a devastating blow. She had staked so much on making it on the American
X Factor
– leaving her country, much of her original management and her
solo career all behind – placing all her eggs in one basket. To have those eggs hurled out of the basket almost immediately was embarrassing for Cole as a person and, potentially, devastating
to her professionally.

When he joined her US management team, Will had been full of bombast: ‘She’s got a bright future ahead – no question,’ he said. Therefore, the hit that Cole took in being
ejected from
The X Factor
not only struck her, but also Will, who had told friends that he was so confident he would stake his reputation on making her American dream come true.

As well as talking
up
Cole, Will attempted to raise her stature by talking down the circus from which she had been ejected. He began to argue that she had wasted her time on
The X
Factor
. ‘Cheryl is a great artist and performer and to see that go away just for TV – it wasn’t cool. It was a
waste of talent,’ he told the
Daily Star Sunday
. He added that by concentrating on television rather than music, she had ‘abandoned her basics’.

He also slammed the team behind the UK show for what he saw as the failure of 2010
X Factor
graduate Cher Lloyd’s career. ‘She should have been huge,’ he said of
Lloyd, who had been Cole’s act during that series. Of course, part of his dismissal of
The X Factor
was due to his forthcoming starring role on what would be its UK primetime
Saturday-night rival.
The Voice
, he argued, was quite a contrast to
The X Factor
. The show on which he would appear would, he said, ‘honour what music was originally about
and take it back full circle to what it was always meant to be, The Voice.’ What better way to gain the last laugh in this sorry saga than to make the show that Cowell dreaded a big
success?

Meanwhile, Will took stock. He admitted that ‘it was hard’ to deal with the Cole fall-out. He had not been prepared for the issue to arise as it had, and he had to learn fast the
best way to respond to such episodes. Looking back later, he felt he had learned well. ‘Since the American
X Factor
stuff I’ve learned a lot – about myself and the music
industry,’ he said.