Typically, contestants fill out applications and have to sing in front of a preliminary panel who then decides which contestants will go on to appear in front of the celebrity judges to be filmed for American Idol.
The moment had to be emotionally overwhelming for Ryan Seacrest, who usually doesn’t have much consequential input in the competition.
This is why the situation was so surprising to the judges, and presumably why Seacrest added they had “no idea what she sounds like.”
Here, though, he basically used his cachet to advance someone that was originally turned away for not adhering to the standard methods of application.