NEW YORK – A video of an interview with Paula Abdul appears to show the "American Idol" judge slurring her words and rocking back and forth in her seat, but her publicist says any oddities in the tape were due to technical difficulties.
The video clip, which has wound up on the file-sharing Web site YouTube, is of a morning-show interview Abdul did Thursday via satellite from New York with the local FOX affiliate in Seattle.
The very upbeat Abdul seems to be slurring her words during much of the segment, and at times she is moving around so much in her chair that she almost swivels right out of the shot.
Click here to watch the YouTube video of the interview.
Her publicist, Jeff Ballard, told FOXNews.com that the buzz surrounding the clip, which is titled "Paula Abdul — What is she smokin'???" on YouTube, is "much ado about nothing."
"It was a technical problem," he said. "They dropped the sound not once but twice. She's in a little room by herself and could hear people shouting in her mike. She did 20 of those interviews without incident. It was simply a matter of Seattle screwing up."
He denied that Abdul's speech was impaired during the interview.
"She was not slurring her words," said Ballard.
"American Idol," which premieres Tuesday night on FOX, has distanced itself from the incident. A spokeswoman for the popular singing-competition reality show referred all inquiries about Abdul's behavior in the interview to Ballard.
In other "Idol" news, when asked about Bob Dylan's wish to join him as a judge on the series, Simon Cowell told British paper The Guardian, "Bob Dylan bores me to tears.
"I don't believe the Bob Dylans of this world would make 'American Idol' a better show," he told the newspaper.
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