She had to be rolled out to her chair standing on a dolly, and then after she was finally seated and the show was going on, she fell backwards and landed with a big thud! “I lost my balance,” she told Parade.com backstage after Idol wrapped for the night. “I went back and the whole world heard me thud. And you know what? Luke was just pointing and laughing. Everyone has a friend like Luke that doesn’t help you get up or ask, ‘Are you OK?’ Just points and laughs at you.” The most important thing, though, is that Katy is fine. She admitted, “I might wake up a little sore in the morning. We knew it wasn’t going to be perfect with the tail. The fin is actually pretty heavy. I’ve been a mermaid once before for a commercial for my Vegas residency, so I had kind of a run through then, but this is really fun.” Katy’s fellow judges—Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie—want to make sure that everyone knows they had nothing to do with her fall. “Rumor has it that Luke and I tripped her and made her fall,” Lionel said. “It was totally an accident. Now that I know she’s smiling, that was the funniest accident I ever saw! It was straight out of slapstick. When she went down, she had this smile on her face like, ‘I finally did it.’ I went, ‘Katy, you could have broken your neck, both of your ankles.’ The look on Ryan’s face said it all. He didn’t know if the show was over, and we had lost a judge because she went down like a stone.” This was the second time Katy has dressed as a character from The Little Mermaid, previously having decked out as the villainous Ursula and she said it was worth repeating the film because they are such iconic characters. “I was thinking about what I could be,” said Katy, who has also dressed up as Cinderella, Snow White and Dumbo. “I had a few other options in the front of my mind because I’ve been going through all the movies with my own daughter. I knew I wanted to do Ariel at one point. She’s such an icon and The Little Mermaid is going to come out one day very soon and I thought the funny factor would be not having any feet.” It turned out to be the case, but not in the way that she had planned. Katy also said she’s tried to get Luke and Lionel to dress up as well, but so far her efforts have met with resistance. “It’s probably for the best that I get all the shine,” she said, “but I literally sat them down when I was Tinkerbell last year, and I was like, ‘Luke, you could be Peter Pan. Lionel, you could definitely be Hook. Come on!’ Maybe they just don’t have enough confidence.” But when pushed, Katy admitted, “It’s not really confidence, it’s idiotic-ness.” Next, Love ‘Em or Hate ‘Em? American Idol Judge Luke Bryan Shares How He Really Feels About Platinum Tickets