SIMON COWELL IS STILL JUST A GUY IN A BLACK T-SHIRT (With a Few Hundred No. 1s!)

Sure, the always frank music mogul has got the mansions and the millions — but his new series shows a dad, a partner and a guy who still worries, works hard and gets humbled like the rest of us

- NICHOLAS HAUTMAN & DAN WAKEFORD

Simon Cowell's new Netflix docuseries, The Next Act, opens with the music mogul getting what his partner, Lauren Silverman, describes as “the longest haircut ever” inside their sprawling London home. Just when she thinks it’s finally over, an irritated Lauren, 48, walks back into the bathroom and asks Cowell, 66, why he's getting his “makeup done too,” to which he deadpans, “To look handsome.” Stars — They're Just Like Us, eh?

Sure, the six-episode show (out Dec. 10) features Cowell jetting from a sun-kissed Barbados villa to his crystal-filled Malibu mansion and a beachfront Miami hotel, but even during luxurious pit stops, he’s as simple as they come. After all, the man’s been wearing his signature black T-shirt and jeans for two decades and counting! “When I go to work, it’s so easy,” he tells Us. “I just open up my wardrobe door, everything's identical, and I don’t have to think about it.”

Cowell teases that the yet-to-be-revealed winners of The Next Act are "everything you want in a band.

Those tees have been through it all with Cowell, who got his start in the music industry in the 1980s before becoming a household name as a judge on American Idol, The X Factor, America’s Got Talent and their British counterparts during the early aughts. He's launched the careers of Little Mix, Fifth Harmony and, most famously, One Direction, but now he’s on the hunt for a new group in The Next Act. “Since One Direction decided to split up [in 2016], I haven't signed another successful boy band,” he acknowledges in the series. “I miss it so much.” Money and fame aside, Cowell is just a guy doing his job.

Returning to His Roots