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In Hollywood, the pressures to glow up—to look sleeker and smoother and uncannily better—are so immense that not even hallways are immune. Consider the passageway between the backstage area and the set of The Jennifer Hudson Show, which, thanks to a series of short-form videos, has become known as the “spirit tunnel,” a dance floor-ish Rubicon that must be crossed by (almost) every guest who appears on the talk show. Last season, it was a nondescript hallway furnished with the same dreary drop ceiling and gray tiled carpeting that you’ve probably encountered in countless office buildings. At the beginning of the show’s new season earlier this month, it got a makeover: The carpet is now fuzzier and champagne-colored, there’s more side lighting, and the photos hanging throughout have been upgraded and arranged gallery-style. That ugly ceiling is still there, though.
The hallway earned this upgrade because it got famous on social media last season, and in the process gave Hudson her version of “Carpool Karaoke” or “Hot Ones” or “Subway Takes”—a viral gimmick that can be parceled out into clips that can be used to promote the show online. For each video, members of the show’s crew line the hallway on both sides, clapping and singing an original song or chant that incorporates the star’s name and, often, something about their career, such as “Somebody’s watching me, It’s Penn Badgely”—because Badgely played a stalker on his Netflix show You—or, more simply, “We got Shemar Moore coming through the do-or.” The New York Times reported earlier this year than the tunnel began as a way to hype up Hudson herself, and it wasn’t until January 2024 that producers decided to start extending that courtesy to guests too. Two producers were tasked with coming up with a new song for each visitor, and that October, they started filming them. The first one to get posted, of Gwen Stefani, received more than 40 million views. Since then, spirit tunnel videos have been watched billions—that’s billions, with a b—of times.
The best spirit tunnel videos are able to capture a slightly different aspect of star quality than what usually comes across in a talk show interview. Is the star rushing to the stage, or are they game to get a little silly? Can they come up with something cool to do on the fly? Are they generous and gracious to regular people? The videos also tend to reveal which stars have rhythm and which don’t, which has proven a challenge for, er, white celebrities in particular. The only person who seems to have opted out of the spirit tunnel altogether was Noah Wyle in April, who gave the excuse that he carried residual dancing trauma from an incident in his youth. This was sweet in its own way, though one wonders if other celebrities will feel empowered enough to do the same, or if prepping a little walkout dance will become yet another requirement of the modern press tour, right up there with needing to be able to eat mouth-scorching wings on camera or flirt with a dry British comedienne at a chicken shop.
The first season of the spirit tunnel got a boost from the element of surprise: Stars like Angela Bassett and Kathryn Hahn seemed genuinely unaware that a phalanx of cheering staffers would be waiting for them in that hall and came off all the more charming for the way they rolled with it—Hahn’s performance wasn’t at all diminished and maybe was even improved by the fact that she was chewing gum throughout it. Ethan Slater, the musical theater star and beau of Ariana Grande, was also caught off guard by the spirit tunnel and didn’t adapt nearly as coolly, but his performance still managed to be strangely hypnotic and endearing, ultimately inspiring dozens of people to attempt to reenact it on TikTok.
At the risk of being a spirit tunnel hipster who complains that it was better before it got big, I lament that the days of spirit tunnel–oblivious guests are probably behind us. As the first season of the show with spirit tunnels wore on, some of the stars already started to seem too eager, too excited for their shot at viral glory, in a way that seems counter to the whole spirit of the spirit tunnel. As we enter the second season of spirit tunnels—Season 4 of The Jennifer Hudson Show began this month—the tradition will no doubt continue to evolve.
And yet maybe the surprises will keep coming too: This week, no one knew quite what to make of Simon Cowell’s spirit tunnel performance. Cowell’s awkward mannerisms might be the result of him having been seriously injured in an e-bike accident a few years ago, but that context was no doubt lost on millions of viewers who came across the clip. The very next day, Regina Hall proved that innovation is still possible in the form when she joined two of her One Battle After Another co-stars, Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti, in the tunnel. Hall marched down the carpet holding two signs that read “Hell naw to the naw naw naw” and “I am NOT dancing next to Teyana T.,” a reference to Taylor’s career as an accomplished dancer.
As the novelty of the tunnel has begun to fade, the other thing that’s notably changed is that aforementioned renovation. I hate to be a declinist once again, but I miss the original tunnel, whose unassumingness was an underrated part of its appeal. It was cute that all these stars were dancing through such an ordinary hallway, and the efforts to make that boring hallway luxe could only go so far when there’s no way to change, and I’m sorry to harp on this, that sad ceiling.
For a video series designed to promote Jennifer Hudson’s TV show, the spirit tunnel has remarkably little to do with Hudson herself; she is presumably already sitting on stage waiting for her guests when it usually takes place. Does seeing stars dance down the spirit tunnel actually encourage anyone to tune in to The Jennifer Hudson Show? I would venture to say that it doesn’t—I’ve never seen a full episode, something multiple people who have written about the show have volunteered. This is the same challenge late-night shows face in an era when fewer people watch traditional broadcast television, and whether these viral videos will be deemed worth their trouble remains an ongoing question. I’m not smart enough to resolve it, but personally, I hope they find a way to keep making spirit tunnel videos in the meantime, not least of all because I really need to see Timothée Chalamet in that hallway.
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