Former “American Idol” judge Simon Cowell credited his kid with saving him from a very dark time in his life after the reality star lost his parents and became what he called a “ridiculous workaholic.”
Speaking on “The Diary Of A CEO” podcast, Cowell opened up about how his 10-year-old son Eric helped him get to a place where he could be “happy again” after Cowell said he had been on a “downward spiral” following the loss of his mom in 2015 and his father years earlier, People magazine reported.
“I think particularly when I lost my mum, I was on a downward spiral at that point,” Cowell told the host. “I lost everyone, you know, I’ve lost my parents. It’s finality now. What I said about the material things I’ve got, everything just meant nothing at that point.”
Simon Cowell credits his son Eric for saving him amid a ‘downward spiral’ after his parents’ death: ‘It changed everything in my life. It made me happy again.’ https://t.co/5LzBFv44sK
— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) June 10, 2024
“I was desperately unhappy, I wasn’t particularly enjoying my work and I just thought you know what I’m just going to become a vampire then, and I would work through until 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning,” he added. “I would wake up at 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon and I actually got addicted to that kind of lifestyle. I just loved the intensity. It was almost like because of the loss I’d had, I’ve got to find something else to fill it. And it was I’m just going to be a ridiculous workaholic, and I was very successful but I wasn’t happy, I really, really wasn’t happy.”
Cowell, who tied the knot in 2013 with Lauren Silverman, recalled the day he got the call that she was pregnant.
“When I got the call from Lauren, which starts, any call that starts with, ‘Are you sitting down?’ You know what‘s coming next. It was like, ‘Are you sitting down?’ ‘Yes,’ ‘Well,’ and she told me. And yes it did absolutely change, it changed everything in my life,” Cowell said. “It made me happy again.”
“For me, it was perfect because like we were talking earlier about our childhoods, it was brilliant. Fantastic,” he added. “I remember the first time I watched ‘Jungle Book’ [with him] and I’m looking over and seeing the joy he had watching that movie. It was like, oh my God I remember how I felt when I saw ‘The Jungle Book.’”
When the host pressed the “America’s Got Talent” judge if he would say his son “saved him,” Cowell replied, “Without question, without question. I really, really had reached the point where nothing mattered.”
Cowell and Silverman welcomed their son to the world in 2014.