Paula keeps it nice

'American Idol' judge Paula Abdul keeps it nice
She shares her thoughts on rabid fans, dating, motherhood, her single with Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell's surprising affection for dogs.
By Choire Sicha, Special to The Times
February 10, 2008

Paula Abdul--choreographer, pop star, "American Idol" judge and dog-lover--had to go to the bathroom before we talked, which made her a little late, and then…

Sorry! I got stopped by two gentleman who wanted to take a picture.

As long as it's not in the bathroom.

Oh, that's happened. A fan leaned over and took a picture and I was mortified and she didn't think there was anything wrong with it…. She deleted it and I took pictures with her.

It's a mad world.

It is. I honestly was weirded out by that and she was so nervous that she thought I wouldn't even notice. And I was like no, no that's not cool. I said to her, "A real good tip: Don't do that to anyone else." The other weird thing is when people are standing right in front of you and they go "That's Paula Abdul!" Like you're hard of hearing. I look over my shoulder. It's scary.

And you're like, I'm a person?

I guess you become larger than life when you're a personality, I suppose. I get all the time: you're so tiny! That's always the first thing. That just goes to show that everyone else is too, including Ryan and Simon. Because TV does make you look larger than life.

Well, they're not big boys.

But they're like, normal height it seems to me. Pretty much everyone is, give or take a couple inches!

Okay, I'm going to guide you now. The rumors have been flying everywhere, so let's get the facts straight. You shot the video on Monday! The single debuts at the Super Bowl, but it's on iTunes now, and the Randy Jackson album comes out in March? What else?

The single doesn't debut at the Super Bowl. Ryan did the world premiere on Friday! And it world-premiered and got an unprecedented amount of calls for it. I'll pull Randy in for this. Lemme ask Randy real quick! 18 million people! Hallelujah! Break out the champagne!

You're excited!

Crazy! You know what, it was a massive callout record, I guess that's what they say. Who knew--except for Randy Jackson and myself. Randy looked so shocked today.

So what's all this Super Bowl talk? People say you're in rehearsals.

I'm just now gearing up. It's a special little thing, a little big thing that we're doing. And that's all I can tell you. It's a super surprise. And there will not be a wardrobe malfunction. My mother made me promise. Randy might have one but I won't. Keep guiding me! But this was something that was asked for us to do. And the timing ended up being perfect. And we can make the request happen and we weren't sure we'd be able to do it because it's been literally around the clock. The song's got a life like a bullet train and it's incredible, I don't even know what day it is anymore. For the video, I started at 11 in the morning and I didn't get home till 4:30 in the morning and then went straight into the shower and went right into hair and makeup and went into a 12 hour shoot for American Idol. The green mile. And yesterday had a meeting regarding the Super Bowl, and today after I do press, I'm going to actually physically start configuring what our super surprise is. So I haven't even stopped. It's been nutty. And I'm like running on adrenalin. But I'm used to this. Honestly it's a fun feeling again. I'm right back where I used to be. Where you're juggling a lot of plates. I'm a good multitask kind of girl. I kind of thrive on it. Until my body breaks down. Until when my body knows it's time to sleep, you can't wake me unless you shook me and an earthquake hit me.

We all got an inside view at your life on "Hey Paula." I thought the point of having assistants and staff was to make your life less chaotic and give you more time to sleep. Why doesn't that work out?

Sleep deprivation is a really serious thing. Obviously we're finding out with Heath Ledger, he was troubled with that. "Hey Paula" was not an accurate account of my life. It was an accurate account of a three week period of filming "Hey Paula," where I was wall to wall, back to back. Where I was the only one promoting American Idol, in a successful QVC run, on a schedule that was not allowing me to sleep. That was very troublesome. And troublesome in the area where it's not me doing what my heart place is, my love.

Yes, I love being a business woman, but I'm an artist. And I flourish when I'm creating and I'm out there doing, performing, and doing that. So it was not that happy heart place of doing that, it was letting people know that this is a business, you can't show me my samples on the day of filming, da-da-da-da. I'm the kind of girl that I still to this day look at the glass half full. I trust people that their word is their word and you think you'd know better in this business, that isn't usually the case. I was raised that everyone starts at 100% and it's up to them that their stock goes up or down.

So yeah: this is a different kind of thing. I'm not sleeping for reasons that are I'm out there being physical and getting the endorphins going and it's a fun thing and I'm loving what I'm doing. I know that tonight I'm gonna sleep well and tomorrow I'm gonna sleep well. Even when I do have the normal time to sleep I'm so hyper, I've never had to have more than 4 hours of sleep. Four hours, that sounds weird, but a lot of artists don't have more than that. But on weekends I sleep.

You can read the rest of the article at LA Times.com. It's a long one