CarterMatt Awards 2018 results: American Idol alum Maddie Poppe wins Reality Star
Welcome back to another CarterMatt Awards results piece, and this time around, we’re talking Reality Star! This is a fun category to focus on every year, mostly because there isn’t really any singular criteria for it. You can be a host, a contestant, or just a member of some documentary-style reality show. What matters the most is just that you are entertaining and that you bring something new to the genre.
This is where Maddie Poppe comes into play, as she is the winner of the prize for 2018! Entering this past season, American Idol likely realized that one way or another, they needed to find the next big star. It was a show coming back after more than a year off the air and that made it more than a little bit of a risk. There was no guarantee that viewers were going to respond to this new version of the series or anything that production brought to the table. Poppe helped to rectify that by offering up a champion who was talented, fun to watch, and also credible outside the show. They needed to find someone viewers would want to get behind.
It’s too early to know whether or not Poppe will find long-term success outside of the show, but she provided American Idol what they needed at the perfect time. She also sets the stage potentially for some other super-talented people to have a chance in the coming seasons. There is another one coming for the show moving forward, and you’ll see that season premiere on the other side of the Academy Awards.
What’s fairly interesting about the Reality Star category this year is that it came down to Maddie vs. Brynn Cartelli, who won the spring season of The Voice and was competing at around the same exact time that she was. Both of these women managed to build pretty solid fan bases in a short period of time; Brynn even returned to The Voice recently for another performance during the finale earlier this month.
Poppe becomes the second singer overall to win the Reality Star award — Sawyer Fredericks won it previously following his run on The Voice. The reigning champ was Big Brother Canada alum Ika Wong coming off of an extremely strong run in 2017.
Congratulations to Maddie and all of her fans who voted her to be the champ! Here’s to hoping that 2019 leads to some big things from her, and from the reality-TV genre as a whole.
What do you think about Maddie Poppe taking home the Reality Star prize at the CarterMatt Awards? Be sure to share some of your thoughts on the subject in the comments and stay tuned for more.