Kelly Clarkson Channels Madonna in Dick Tracy for 2025 Halloween Show (Exclusive)

Kelly Clarkson has all treats, no tricks in store for those tuning in to The Kelly Clarkson Show on Friday, Oct. 31.

PEOPLE was on set for the taping of the Emmy Award-winning daytime show’s 2025 Halloween installment, which was designed as a tribute to the iconic murder mystery movies of the 1940s that helped define one of Hollywood’s most celebrated and recognizable genres.

Like those film noir classics, the episode begins in black and white, with Clarkson standing center stage in front of her band to sing her latest Kellyoke pick.

All are dressed in period garb — Clarkson in a gorgeous gown and her band, My Band Y’all, led by musical director and keyboardist Jason Halbert, in formal white dinner jackets typical of musical acts at the time.

But seconds later, the reference to the curly blonde wig she’s wearing hits as the American Idol champ begins singing a cover of “Sooner or Later,” Stephen Sondheim’s Oscar-winning jazz ballad sung by Madonna in the 1990 neo-noir pastiche Dick Tracy.

Channeling the Queen of Pop, Clarkson, 43, mimics the character’s seductive delivery before letting her signature belt soar on the tune’s top notes. “I’m not an actress,” she later jokes with guests Leanne Morgan and Lance Bass — though her performance could have fooled anyone.

Speaking with PEOPLE about the performance, Halbert — who’s had a front-row seat to Clarkson’s voice for 22 years — says that while she made the song look easy, the number was anything but.

“It was probably one of the most complicated musical episodes we’ve done in seven seasons,” Halbert says, noting the layers Sondheim built into his composition. “Kelly shines in that big band standard era, and her control in the song is just unbelievable. A lot of people are really impressed when she hits the really high notes — and to be honest, that comes really naturally for her. I’m more amazed when she brings you into this sultry, lower register. That’s actually ten times harder to control than the bigger, impressive notes you get the standing ovations for.”

“Sooner or Later” was Clarkson’s idea. In fact, as showrunner and executive producer Alex Duda explains, the Halloween theme is always based on Clarkson’s Kellyoke pick.

“It starts with the song and then we build the show around it,” Duda says. “A lot of the times Kelly will think of the song in the summer, but this time she mentioned ‘Sooner or Later’ back in May. And we were thinking, ‘Do we just do Dick Tracy?’ But that’s an IP and sort of limits what you can do with it. So as we brainstormed, we found our way to film noir, which opens up so many possibilities.”

Art directors Jason Kirschner and Kait Taylor took advantage of that and then some, designing a period-perfect art deco set completely grayscaled.

“When we picked the theme, Kait and I went back and started watching all the Thin Man movies and researching Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon — we did our homework. And they’re all in black and white, so it made us think, ‘What if we black-and-white out the set?’ Because Halloween is the time to take a big swing, right? It’s one show — you might as well go big!”

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Wardrobe supervisor Earl Nicholson then offered a brilliant idea, which viewers see after Clarkson’s Kellyoke performance wraps. Stepping off the stage, she asks her director for a pop of color, and the lens removes the black-and-white filter to reveal Clarkson in a bright red dress.

“To go full color with all the wardrobe just made everything pop,” Duda says. “It was like Pleasantville. It was just fun. And we carried that with our guests, too. So Leanne Morgan, she’s in a gorgeous green dress with red hair, sort of modeled after Lucille Ball in Stage Door. And Lance had his own costume, so he showed up in this bright red jacket, which matched Kelly perfectly. Everyone looks great.”

To go extra meta with the theme, Duda and her team scripted a murder mystery plot into the episode, where Clarkson enlists detective Amber Ruffin to help her find Halbert after he goes missing.

“The second we settled on film noir, I knew we needed to have some kind of mystery we’re solving with skits throughout,” says Duda. “So our whodunit really became an anchor for us, and everyone got in on the action — the band, the guests, even the audience. And Kelly loved it; it inspired a lot of laughs.”

Putting on the Halloween show together every year proves challenging for the team at The Kelly Clarkson Show, who are often planning for the special while juggling their regular workloads.

“It has to be something we can achieve while we’re doing our other shows. All of our pre-production — we don’t have lots of days that are just dedicated to Halloween. We’re constantly working on our daily shows and on our Christmas set at the same time. So we have to keep the team going for about a month trying to produce everything without losing steam on the day-to-day and without being able to hire a totally separate crew to make all this stuff.”

The taping also came on the morning of a two-show day, with a non-Halloween episode set for the afternoon. Says Kirschner: “That meant we had to be able to strike our set between shows — which also meant, while we were designing everything, it couldn’t be so elaborate that we needed more than a lunch break to get it down.”

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They still took advantage of every square foot of Studio 6A in NBC’s famed 30 Rockefeller Center, even transforming the guest entrance into a detective’s office.

“We had to cover up all the color on the set so that when you shoot even to the edges, it’s all black and white,” says Taylor. “To do that, you have to make spaces within spaces, and that guest entrance was an easy area that existed in its own little pocket that we could dress.”

And for fans of Clarkson’s, there are plenty of Easter eggs throughout the set, including a “My Life Would Suck Without Donuts” box.

“No one’s probably noticing all those little details but Jason and I, but that’s what gives us joy,” says Taylor. “Like, all the stuff on the bar cart was authentic 1940s glassware. The vases on set were all vintage. All the floral arrangements are of the period, but in black and white. It was a fun set to dress.”

“We have such a great team here,” Kirschner adds. “It’s an amazing group of people. We’re so grateful to everyone who helped make this happen.”

Duda couldn’t agree more. “I’m so proud of the show this year,” she says. “It’s just a celebration. We’re a show that’s always been about humor, heart, connection and music, and Halloween allows us to live our mission statement of always looking for the light. The world can be heavy, but if we’re able to take people away from that feeling for an hour a day, it’s a win.”

What a treat, indeed.

The Kelly Clarkson Show airs weekdays in syndication (check local listings).