Uh, Where Is Kelly Clarkson And Why Isn’t She Hosting Her Show?

Where in the world is Kelly Clarkson? It’s the question on everyone’s lips, or at least the lips of everyone who pays close attention the to the goings-on of daytime TV talk shows. Kelly has been missing from The Kelly Clarkson Show for a week, which raises the question: Is it still The Kelly Clarkson Show even if there is no Kelly Clarkson on the show?

Kelly’s recent string of absences first began on March 3 when Simi Liu made a last-minute switch from being a guest to leading the whole show as the host. “Kelly isn’t able to make it today. We’re sending her our very best,” Simu said on air on the March 3 show. “I did not know that I was doing this until about five minutes ago when I arrived to promote my new movie Last Breath.”

Kelly returned to the show for the March 4 and 5 episodes and didn’t acknowledge that she’d been out. But before fans could get comfortable with having her back, Kelly was missing from the March 6 show and hasn’t been back since (as of March 12). Since then, a number of celebrity guests have hosted in her place, including Wanda Sykes, Josh Groban, and Brooke Shields, with Molly Sims set to host March 13 and 14. But even though audiences have been left in some very capable hands, fans are missing their Kellyoke and are still wondering where Kelly Clarkson is. Here’s what we know about her absence from her show.

Where Is Kelly Clarkson?

Kelly has not let fans know exactly why she stepped back for a bit, but she has taken some breaks before. In 2022, she took off to the mountains of Montana for the summer and took a break from The Kelly Clarkson Show. “It was really important to me to shut down for a minute,” Clarkson said on the Today show when talking about that trip. “[We] just spent the whole summer in the mountains. It was nice.”

Kelly also tends to take a kind of relaxed, laissez-faire approach to hosting. When The Kelly Clarkson Show first premiered in 2019, Kelly talked about keeping it chill on set. “This is what’s weird about me. Ignorance is bliss. I’m just doing my thing. I love talking to people. I love singing. I love the audience being kind of a co-host with me. My band’s here,” she told USA Today at the time. “So, I’m just kind of doing me. It might work and it might not.”

The Kelly Clarkson Show is not the only project Kelly’s got going on. On July 4, she’s beginning a residency a The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and is set to play 18 shows there through November 2025. So it would totally make sense that Kelly is taking a little time to balance her pretty hectic schedule. In the meantime, we’ll keep Kelly Watch 2025 going as we await her return.