Rumors That Will Always Haunt Carrie Underwood

From the moment Carrie Underwood auditioned for "American Idol," way back in 2004, it was clear that the Checotah, Oklahoma native was destined for big things. That initial performance of Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me" drew raves from Idol judges Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson, springboarding her to the Season 4 championship, which marked the beginning of what has already been a legendary run as a recording artist and performer. Flash forward a couple of decades, and Underwood has logged over 40 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, beginning with the chart-topping "Inside Your Heaven." Over the years that have ensued, Underwood has maintained an enduring presence in the pop culture lexicon through her music and television work.

Alas, while her hometown vibes, sunny energy, and overall relatability — coupled with her movie-star good looks and incredible vocal chops — have been mainstays of her public image, Underwood has nonetheless found herself at the heart of rumors and tabloid gossip. From alleged beefs with other pop divas and questions about her marriage to hockey star Mike Fisher to rumblings of difficult behavior with her costars and fans, there has been no shortage of words dedicated to chronicling her perceived misdeeds in the mainstream press. Here are 11 rumors about Underwood that have and will continue to haunt the crossover country star.

After meeting him backstage at a 2008 concert, Carrie Underwood began her relationship with hockey star Mike Fisher, who, by that time, was well into his NHL career with the Ottawa Senators. The two were engaged the following year and were finally wed in July 2010 in a ceremony at the Ritz-Carlton Lodge, Reynolds Plantation, in Greensboro, Georgia. Since then, Fisher and Underwood have welcomed two kids — sons Isaiah Michael, born in 2015, and Jacob Bryan, who came four years later. "I feel like he is the person I was meant to be with," Underwood said of Fisher in 2019, via People, adding, "I had dated guys and kind of knew, like, 'No.' Nothing was ever really wrong, but nothing was really right either. With him, it was like a good partnership. It was an easy relationship to be in." More recently, though, Underwood's marriage to Fisher has been put under the proverbial microscope.

In 2023, OK! Magazine reported that Fisher had become unhappy with the couple's family situation, with a purported insider saying, "Mike is not happy Carrie extended her residency (in Las Vegas)," adding, "He's very traditional, and while he loves that Carrie has a career, he believes her role as a wife and a mother should be a priority. Mike just wants Carrie to come home." Given the couple's visibility, rumors about whether their marriage can last have, and will likely continue to be circulated, true or not.

In August 2025, it was announced that Carrie Underwood, fellow country star Luke Bryan, and pop icon Lionel Richie would return as judges on "American Idol" for another year. Underwood had replaced singer-songwriter Katy Perry a year earlier, bringing with her the credibility of a former Idol winner and a genre-spanning recording star. Despite the fact that the show's producers saw fit to re-up with Underwood for another go-around, though, questions about whether she'll remain with the reality competition series in the long term have abounded.

A few months before the announcement that she would return to the judge's chair, Life & Style reported that Underwood was struggling with being away from her family to film the show. "She's on the road a lot. She's missing her kids and Mike, which is very tough," an insider told the outlet. "They FaceTime day and night, and she flies home every spare moment she gets, but it's not the same as just being there." It was further opined that just the production itself was taking a toll and Underwood, with the insider saying, "At the end of the shoot day, she's always totally drained from the highs and lows and just goes back to her hotel room to crash ... those nights can be very hard because she just wants to be in Mike's arms or reading bedtime stories to her kids."

Two-plus decades in, there's no doubting that Carrie Underwood's status as "American Idol" royalty. In a world populated by performers like Taylor Hicks, Kris Allen, and Nick Fradiani, Underwood stands apart as a bona fide Idol success story; someone who took full advantage of the opportunities the big win afforded her and became ingratiated in the public discourse through her efforts as an artist and her magnetic personality. So, her return to the show as a judge felt like the stuff storybooks are made of for longtime fans. However, the magic that we see on the screen may just be an illusion, if some of the chatter surrounding her involvement with the show is to be believed.

According to a 2025 report from The Sun, someone with insider knowledge of the show indicated Underwood made the wrong kind of waves during her inaugural run alongside Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie. "I've heard people on set say that Carrie's influence is ruining the legacy of the show," the insider said, via the Sun. "Things started great with her this season, but the longer she's been a judge, the more feathers she has ruffled." It was further noted that Underwood pushed a faith-based episode that polarized producers. "Some didn't think it's completely appropriate but felt uncomfortable speaking up about it while others saw no problem with it as it didn't focus on a specific religion."

As their appearances change over the years due to age, lifestyle, or other factors, those living in the public eye at the highest levels consistently encounter rumors about whether they have sought surgical assistance to maintain or bolster themselves physically. And, for female stars, the discussion about changing looks and low-key medical procedures can be doubly cruel. So, it should come as no surprise that Carrie Underwood has been at the center of plastic surgery rumors for several years. Even Underwood's hair extensions have been analyzed by pop culture pundits.

Going beyond the aesthetic accoutrements, rumours about Underwood getting plastic surgery have been around for some time. As relayed by RadarOnline, social media was abuzz with talk of her appearance amid her Idol return. A doctor told the outlet, "From a cosmetic surgeon's perspective, it appears she has had significant filler treatments, particularly in her lips and cheeks. Her lips display a uniformly plump and inflated appearance, with an absence of natural oral lines, which is a classic sign of filler use." In 2018, Underwood denied rumors that a freak fall was staged as a cover-up for planned surgery, telling Redbook, "I'm on some magazine every other week for something crazy. It's a little sad, because the truth is just as interesting. I wish I'd gotten some awesome plastic surgery to make this [scar] look better."

Perhaps more than any other topic, public beefs and alleged feuds between celebrities continue to capture the imagination of the tabloid crowd and fans alike. As such, fans can count Carrie Underwood among the legion of entertainers linked to a series of petty wars over the years. One rumored feud has pitted the "Cry Pretty" singer against a performer who is arguably the queen of "American Idol" alums in S1 winner and multi-platinum recording artist Kelly Clarkson. "For years, fans have speculated that she and Kelly Clarkson don't get along," a source explained to In Touch Weekly in 2025, who added that comparisons between the stars' respective presidential inauguration performances fanned the flames.

That said, Clarkson laughed off the thought that the two have a bad relationship — or any relationship, really — during a 2023 interview with Andy Cohen. "There's no beef between us — well, there's nothing between us. We don't know each other," she said at the time. Comically, though, Clarkson had served up that assessment of the situation in response to a question that wasn't even about the supposed beef. When that was made clear, Clarkson clarified, "It was great to have her on the show. I think the thing that was cool about it is that everybody always pits us against each other, and I don't know why they do that — they don't do that with dudes. We don't even know each other well enough to do that."

Carrie Underwood lives in rarefied air as a singer, performer, and television personality, but the circle she dwells in gets exceedingly smaller when you remember she's the spouse of a famous professional athlete. One person who joins her in that particular Venn diagram is a former Disney star — and a singer-songwriter in her own right — in "Lizzie McGuire" star Hilary Duff. That particular connection between the two is far more than conceptual, though, as Underwood's husband, Mike Fisher, and Duff's former beau, Mike Comrie, were actually teammates on the NHL's Ottawa Senators at one time. While one might assume that shared experience would bring them together, some have suggested that the opposite occurred.

A Threads post claiming that Duff used to ignore Underwood at games they both attended went viral in 2025. For her part, Duff once joked that she was actually jealous of Underwood when Fisher was sent from the Senators to the Nashville Predators. "I'm a little envious of her right now because he just got traded to Nashville," Duff joked to reporters, via Today. "Like, 'Really?' I'm like, 'Come on! I'll take San Jose, I'll take any place closer than Pittsburgh!" Whether the comment was truly lighthearted in nature, a low-key admission of some deep-seated feeling, or a subtle jab regarding the trade is subject to fan theory.

The list of stars who supposedly can't stand Carrie Underwood is fairly substantial, given the one-time "American Idol" winner's now lengthy stay in the spotlight. In addition to rumored beefs with Kelly Clarkson and Hilary Duff, there's been noise about Underwood having issues with Demi Lovato, Kim Kardashian, and a host of other celebrities. That said, the biggest name to be bandied about alongside Underwood in that way is undeniably that of pop icon and country music maven turned megastar Taylor Swift. While there's seemingly no stopping the "Shake It Off" songstress, the Daily Mail reported in 2025 that Underwood was engaged in an effort to subtly shade and differentiate herself from Swift. Most recently, Underwood's performance at the second inauguration of Donald Trump factored into the alleged feud.

"Some people close to Taylor think Carrie took the Trump inauguration gig to spite Taylor," a source close to Swift reportedly told the Daily Mail afterward. "They've had a little bad blood in the past, and Taylor famously endorsed Kamala Harris." They added, "Some people in the industry do think this is Carrie's way of marking her territory as 'Miss Americana' as her side of the political aisle won the election." At the very least, the notion that Underwood would dare to take on the Swifties is wild to think about.

Her big voice and striking features notwithstanding, there's no denying that Carrie Underwood's bubbly, girl-next-door demeanor played a huge part in her ascension in the pop star hierarchy. However, some believe that her public persona may not match what those involved with her myriad projects encounter when the cameras aren't rolling. As relayed by BuzzFeed in a 2021 roundup of rude celebrity stories, a maintenance worker at a concert venue reportedly asserted that Underwood was a diva in the worst possible way when she rolled through town. "Carrie Underwood is the one who sticks out because of how demanding she always was. She refused to use a toilet if someone else had sat on the seat before her — cleaning them was never good enough, so we had to buy new toilet seats every time she came."

Whether you buy that line or not, there have been other reports of Underwood being overly demanding of those she works with and around. According to RadarOnline, an insider claimed that Underwood was "making it very clear that she wants the VIP treatment" amid her inauguration performance. Meanwhile, The Sun recently reported that crew members from the "American Idol" production felt as though Underwood was "ruining" the show with her machinations. "It still hasn't clicked with her that this is a worldwide franchise with hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars on the line," the outlet was told.

Carrie Underwood's image as America's sweetheart has been well-established, but reported accounts of her being difficult behind the scenes paint an entirely different portrait of the star. So did some anecdotal fan accounts, including one shared by a LiveJournal user at the beginning of her post-Idol run in 2007. As the story goes, the person's friend was a DJ at a country music station when they met Underwood at a convention for St. Jude's Children's Hospital. While at the event, the DJ, who was an admitted fan of Underwood, was working with the singer on some ad-libs for the radio station. The DJ recounted that after they warmly greeted Underwood and thanked her for her time, "she mutters something back, rips the liner sheet out of my hand, and looks up like she has something better to do, and says, 'Ready?'" Other people who had encountered Underwood reportedly had similar stories.

Rumors and innuendo aside, though, there have also been some on-camera situations involving Underwood that left some fans scratching their heads. One such instance came during her tenure as an Idol judge, when she was critical of contestant Jamal Roberts after a performance that managed to rouse the audience and the other judges alike. "I feel like you missed such an opportunity to move around and entertain," she surprisingly quipped, via Country Thang Daily. 

Wearing one's politics on their sleeve can lead to descents down some particularly slippery slopes, be it privately in their relationships or in the court of public opinion. Carrie Underwood alluded to this phenomenon during a 2019 chat with The Guardian, saying, "I try to stay far out of politics if possible, at least in public, because nobody wins. It's crazy. Everybody tries to sum everything up and put a bow on it, like it's black and white. And it's not like that." That assessment may sound spot on, Underwood may have let slip some of her political beliefs with her performance at the Donald Trump inauguration. She was also criticized for some weird behavior toward Kamala Harris.

Meanwhile, her and her husband's social media activity left people wondering about their stance on the COVID-19 virus. As reported by Page Six, Underwood liked a tweet promoting an anti-mask mandate video from right-wing political commentator Matt Walsh in 2021. That same year, the singer's husband, Mike Fisher, defended NFL star Aaron Rodgers' decision not to get vaccinated via Instagram. Underwood later looked exceedingly nonplussed on the ABC telecast of the 2021 Country Music Awards when the camera cut to her after Luke Bryan talked about observing health protocols and followed with a veiled joke about Rodgers.

Carrie Underwood's decision to perform at Donald Trump's second inauguration was unsurprisingly met with backlash from those who hold contrasting political beliefs. One forum where criticism of her actions was presented was on "The View," where co-host Joy Behar asked, "How do you love your country and support and normalize somebody who was a convicted felon, who really wants to destroy the country, in my opinion. I don't understand how you say you love your country at the same time as you normalize this convicted felon." Discussion of Underwood's perceived politics led some to believe and even propagate the idea that she is in the process of suing the show.

Posts alleging that Underwood was suing the program for hundreds of millions of dollars have circulated on social media. According to Snopes, the rumor likely originated from a YouTube video by the channel OkayRickk, which made such claims. However, no evidence of an actual lawsuit has ever emerged. Still, iterations of the video continue to circulate online.