She wants to breakaway.
Kelly Clarkson wants to quit her daytime talk show when her contract with NBC expires next year, leaving executives at the network scrambling to find ways to keep her onboard, Page Six reports.
The news follows the “Since U Been” singer-turned-chat show queen’s still-unexplained absence from “The Kelly Clarkson Show” for nearly two weeks last month. Reporting at the time suggested Clarkson left the airwaves because of a “personal matter.”
Multiple sources have now told Page Six that the original “American Idol” winner, 42, wants to exit her eponymous talkshow to spend more time with her daughter River Rose, 10, and son Remy, 8.
“Kelly’s No. 1 priority is her children, and they always will be,” one industry insider told Page Six of the Texas native. “The show is grueling. It’s a whole lot of work and I hear that Kelly would like to spend more time down South.”
A rep for Clarkson declined to comment. NBCU did not immediately reply to The Post’s request for comment.
Clarkson recently got emotional speaking about her children on the 1,000th episode of her show, which also marked her return after her string of absences from the show.
“On a personal level I think the most meaningful change for me at least is my own family,” Clarkson said, before being shown a clips of her kids’ appearances on her program.
“Over the years I’ve had my kiddos onstage with me and they’ve always blown me away. So this is a look back on those memories,” she added, introducing the montage.
“I’ve actually never seen this,” she shared, fighting back tears. “So you’re crying. I’m not,” the singer then said with a laugh.
The “Behind These Hazel Eyes” hitmaker also struck a personal chord in another segment in the milestone broadcast, confessing that she “lost, alone, a lot” over the course of the show’s nearly six year run
“We created a community and supported each other through a lot of ups and downs — a lot of ups and downs personally as well,” said Clarkson, who moved her show from LA to New York in 2023.
“For 1,000 episodes, we have laughed together, we have cried together with beautiful stories, sang together with some people, danced together, celebrated and competed together,” she said.
“I’ve lost, alone, a lot,” the Grammy-winner added, a slight warble in her voice, seemingly alluding to her 2020 divorce from her former manager Brandon Blackstock after seven years of marriage.
“It’s OK,” she then noted with a shrug.
Clarkson has previously spoken about the toll the divorce took on her.
“Just to be brutally honest, I did not handle [the divorce] well,” the chart-topper admitted to Zane Lowe in a 2023 interview.
“I don’t know how people get through anything like that because I’m not going to say I did it gracefully. Behind closed doors by myself, it was not,” she confessed.
Clarkson remembered “crying so hard” even before she and Blackstock officially separated that she “couldn’t even speak.”
Per Page Six, the star received approximately $10 million each season as a judge on NBC’s “The Voice,” which she departed from in 2021. She is believed to be paid even more for her daytime hosting gig in a deal negotiated by Blackstock.
“The Kelly Clarkson Show” launched in 2019 and was renewed for Season 7 in December 2024, keeping Clarkson in NBC’s stable until 2026. And despite the show’s consistently impressive ratings, a TV insider told Page Six that the program doesn’t yield a large profit and is expensive to produce.
“It’s a tough job and profit margins are low,” said the source.
Insiders also revealed that NBC wants Clarkson to stay on the network to host holiday specials like “Christmas in Rockefeller Center.”
Meanwhile, a report surfaced earlier this week claiming Clarkson would be replacing Hoda Kotb as Jenna Bush-Hager’s cohost on the 10 a.m. hour of the”Today” show — a report that didn’t “make any sense” to sources who spoke with Page Six.
“If she wants to spend more time with her kids, she certainly wouldn’t get that [at ‘Today’] and she’s never even guest co-hosted [‘Today With Jenna and Friends’],” one insider pointed out, while another stressed that the “Today” job is possibly more grueling than hosting “The Kelly Clarkson” show.
