Cowell spoke to ET ahead of his new show, 'AGT: Extreme' about his own accident on an electric bike.
Simon Cowell is back in action after breaking his arm and back on an electric bike.
ET's Kevin Frazier spoke to the TV show judge about how he's recovering since his latest fall, and the type of stunts fans can expect to see on his new show, AGT: Extreme.
"I was just saying to your team, that now you can change the color [to what] you want," Cowell said, lifting up his arm to reveal a blue cast, accessorized with sparkles per request of his 8-year-old son, Eric. "It was Eric's birthday a couple of weeks ago. So, I said I will go with what you want. Any color requests? Purple with sparkles. I said, 'OK, I will see what I can do.'"
Cowell's already back on his though, much to Eric's dismay.
"I actually went on one yesterday and I went out in the road, but I thought, the expression, 'you gotta get back on your bike?' So, I thought, 'I am just going to get back on my bike,' so I did," Cowell said about riding again after his accident. "I was with Eric, he spotted me. He went crazy. I had to get off the bike and walk him back to my hotel room."
Despite being eager to ride his again, Cowell acknowledges that he was lucky his biking accidents weren't any worse.
"I was lucky both times," he said. "When I broke my back, I broke my wrist, it could have been a lot worse, so you kind of learn something from the experience."
While Cowell's accident did not come from any of the extreme acts on his new show, the 62-year-old is a bit of a thrill seeker and admits that AGT: Extreme is a show he's been wanting to make for 10 years now.
"Well, we wanted to make this show a hit, and I said for about 10 years, it has been kind of something we keep saying we are going to do, these occasional big extreme auditions on the main show," Cowell explained. "What if we made a show that was just the extreme acts?"
He continued, "And about 18 months ago, NBC finally said yes. And it was like, now we have to put a judging team together, and is anyone going to turn up? I have no idea. Luckily, they did and we had a great judging team, Terry joined me, but I have got to tell you, out of everything I have ever done in my life, this was the scariest."
The show puts on some risky acts and in taking that risk, sometimes accidents do happen, like they did to contestant Jonathan Goodwin, who was badly injured after an escape act went wrong.
"One of the contestants had a really, really bad accident, I mean horrendous, and that was the worst thing that has ever happened to me making these shows," Cowell shared. "Then I saw him about three days after the accident, amazingly he was in incredible spirits at that point. I mean, his mental strength is remarkable, we spoke today and today is the day he is leaving the hospital."
"Bearing in mind that this accident happened only, you know, a few months ago," he added. "His progress and how he is handling everything, I said, 'You are like, a super human.'"
While accidents do happen, Cowell said it's something that you "pray is never going to happen."
"It was something genuinely, you pray that is never going to happen, and it did, and we stopped the show," Cowell shared. "And then we had to make a decision, do we continue with it or not? And we took a break and then we made the decision that we were going to finish the show."
Cowell even consulted the contestants to see if they wanted to continue with the show, after seeing firsthand the dangers that are involved.
"I actually did speak to some of the contestants themselves to get some advice on that, and they all said the same thing -- you should finish the show," he said.
While we've seen America's Got Talent and the array of acts there, AGT: Extreme has stunts unlike any Cowell says he's seen in his life. Though season 1 hasn't aired yet, the longtime judge said, he'd be interested in doing it all again for a second season.
"Filming it, compared to the main show, it's a very different experience, genuinely most of the time I was terrified and you will see in episode one, you will understand why," Cowell teased. "I mean, some of the the acts we saw, I have never seen anything like it in my life."
"And then when I watched it back, the first episode, because now I am watching everything a bit closer, it is like, incredible," he continued. "But to your point, yeah, I would do it again."
America's Got Talent: Extreme premieres Feb. 21 at 8:00 p.m. ET on NBC.
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