The NBC daytime talk show, which kicked off its fifth season on Monday, now tapes at 30 Rock in New York City.
This is a major relocation for the show, which spent its first four seasons at Universal City Studios in Los Angeles. Here’s Kelly (with the cast of Barbie) in her old studio:
The reason for the move has everything to do with Kelly Clarkson’s personal life, and the host has been opening up in recent interviews about why she moved her show across the country.
“I’ll be real honest: I thought I was making a horrible decision,” she told USA Today in an interview published on Monday.
“I knew I needed a fresh start and couldn’t be in LA. I really wanted to be in Montana, but you can’t really do a show from there quite yet,” she continued. “So I was like, ‘The only other option would probably be New York.'”
Kelly has a ranch in Montana that she calls home, and the fresh start she mentions likely had to do with the end of her marriage to Brandon Blackstock. According to People, the former couple, who are parents to two children, settled their divorce in March of last year.
Now in New York, Kelly apparently doesn’t have any regrets about the decision to set up shop on the East Coast.
“I genuinely love it, and I love that my kids love it,” she also told USA Today of living in New York.
Still, the prospect of moving her talk show in its fifth season out of Los Angeles initially concerned her. “It’s like, why would I ruin it, right?” she told the Daily Beast’s Obsessed in another interview also published on Monday.
“Why would I change something, from a business standpoint? But personally, I was really not doing well, and had not been for years in that city. I knew I needed a fresh start, but I just didn’t want to come off as ungrateful,” she continued.
It seems that horrible decision she was worried she’d made didn’t turn out bad at all. Kelly explained she’s already starting to feel at home in 30 Rock. According to the Daily Beast, her first episode in New York even featured numerous NBC legends, including Hoda Kotb, Jenna Bush Hager, Seth Meyers, and Jane Krakowski.
“Everyone in this building, a lot of them are people known for over 20 years of coming in and out of this building,” she told the Daily Beast. “There was this camaraderie even before we shot our first episode. That’s the vibe of 30 Rock for me, so it already feels like home.”