Some of us haven’t been wearing much of anything around the house during our social distancing, just pulling on the closest T-shirt for Zoom calls. Then there’s Katy Perry, still over the top as ever. On April 26’s American Idol, the first remote episode of a competition show during the coronavirus pandemic, the judge wore a full-body hand-sanitizer outfit. No, that’s not a quarantine-induced hallucination. The bottle reads “American Idol: Instant Music Sanitizer,” with holes for Perry’s face and hands — and, yes, she wore it for the entire two-hour episode. What else did you expect from the woman who dressed as a hamburger and a chandelier for the Met Gala? Before showtime, she posted a joking PSA video to her Instagram, of her washing dishes in the outfit. “Oh, hey. Katy Perry here, reminding you to stay safe, wash your hands, and tune into an all-new, like-never-before episode of American Idol, tonight,” she says in the video.
The top 20 performed for America’s votes remotely, after being sent iPhones to shoot, lighting equipment, and outfits to replicate the experience of the show, Deadline reported. The judges gave video commentary from their own homes, and Ryan Seacrest hosted from his, using an Idol desk he got as a gift after the show’s run on Fox ended. The show only has three more episodes left — giving Perry enough time to plan a Clorox-wipe-container outfit for the finale.