Whitney Houston was being considered as a judge for Fox’s "The X Factor," said Simon Cowell, appearing on CNN’s "Piers Morgan Tonight," according to The Hollywood Reporter’s the Live Feed blog.

Houston was interested in the role and was actively campaigning to join the show, the story says. Cowell said Houston and other potential judges were to be discussed by people behind the show the day after the Grammy Awards, held Sunday.

"We were, ironically, going to meet on Monday and of course, one of the names we were going to be talking about in that meeting as a possible mentor on the new series of ‘X Factor’ was going to be Whitney Houston," Cowell said. He added that he was "absolutely devastated" by her death.