News: America's Got Brandy

The show's weekly dominance in the ratings proves people are turning in by the millions each week, prompting NBC to announce the green light for a second season. But would those same viewers run home to watch such acts as yodelers, grown men placing themselves into giant bubbles, fools laying on nails, ventriloquists, jugglers and Rappin' Granny if the show aired in the fall opposite some real (and not reality) competition?

"My four-year-old is the biggest fan of the show," said Brandy, one of the show's judges, during its session at the Television Critics Association press tour last month. "She loves seeing different things. Because children, they just like new things all the time. So she's like, at the TV, just smiling and excited all the time."

If anything, "America's Got Talent" has been credited as one of the few shows in primetime that the whole family can watch together. Executive produced by "American Idol" judge Simon Cowell, it borrows all of "Idol's" winning elements: a surly British judge who tells it like it is, a warm-hearted African American female judge who takes a more supportive tone when criticizing the talent, and an affable third judge who keeps a smile on his face and plays to the audience.

Nestled in the middle chair between judges Piers Morgan and David Hasselhoff, Brandy says she enjoys getting to "speak her mind" about the spectacles that unfurl before her - that's if she doesn't smack the buzzer midway through to end things early.

Her strategy in judging talent? "I just try to stay in my own lane, I just try to stick with my opinion," Brandy says. "I don't want to be influenced by anyone else. That's really what I'm working on, just confirming what I say and sticking to it. Because, sometimes you do get influenced by sympathy and you don't want to hurt people's feelings."

The show will make one winning act a million dollars richer, but for Brandy - who hasn't seen this much industry interest in her since "Moesha" went off the air in 2001 - the experience has been priceless.

"I've had so many different things come my way," Brandy told us after "Talent's" TCA panel. "I'm happy about it because it's a lot of fashion stuff. I just did a fashion shoot with OK magazine that I was really excited about because I've never looked like that before. I was like, ‘Oh my God. I need to do more fashion shoots. This is so much fun.'"

While promoting "America's Got Talent," which ends its first season on Aug. 16, Brandy was also able to do several talk shows, and thereby, take further advantage of the sudden returning spotlight. The 27-year-old single mom was one of the first to sit in Star Jones Reynolds' vacated seat on "The View" and had a rather precarious exchange with Barbara Walters that left many African American female viewers uncomfortable. Brandy had barely taken her seat before Walters stuck her fingers in the girl's curly shoulder-length locks and asked if the hair was hers.

"I was like, ‘Let me think of something to come back with, ‘cause she ‘bout to ask me something that I'll have to have a comeback,'" Brandy said, channeling the hood ever-so-slightly. "And when she asked me what I knew she was going to ask me, I had a comeback and it worked."

After a few "uh...uhs...," Brandy looked at Barbara on her right, rolled her eyes toward Joy Behar on her left and said, "It ain't a wig. ...Okaaay?"

"The audience loved it, the people laughed and I felt good about it," Brandy said. But the experience may not be enough to encourage the McComb, Mississippi native to take a permanent position on the morning chatfest, should Walters extend the offer.

"Just out of honor for the fact that Barbara Walters is a legend, I would really have to give that some serious thought," Brandy said of the hypothetical situation. "But, when I think about it to myself, it's just really a tough commitment to put myself into because of everything I want to do. I can't tour and be the music artist I want to be if I do ‘The View.' I definitely can't do ‘Got Talent' and all of the other things I want to do."

One thing Brandy's been dying to do for years is nab a starring role on the Great White Way.

"I have a great idea for a musical that I really, really wanna do," she tells us. "And before I retire, which is I don't know when, I wanna do Broadway."

Brandy says she's not sure when she'll get back to doing music, but it still ranks as her first love and she always has it in the back of her mind.

"That's what makes me happy the most," she explains. "I can't wait to get back into it. It would just complete everything that's going on in my life right now."