American Idol alum David Archuleta reveals his experience as a teen heartthrob gaining the hearts of millions while working on the competition show pushed his life into a direction he didn’t expect but he’s regained his once-lost power by taking ownership of his sexuality and starting on a new musical path.
In a new interview with Variety Magazine, the singer opened up about his American Idol journey, saying that he “felt so disconnected from everything” at the time. “Like, 13 years later, I’m piecing together what actually was going on. But it’s still a process because I still don’t understand why people were so into it,” he told the outlet.
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“I think I was just in protection mode the whole time,” he says. “If anything, I was putting a wall between me and everyone else.”
As for what the wall could’ve been protecting, the outlet explains, was related to his sexuality. Archuleta came out via Instagram in June of last year, telling his 448,000 followers that he’s bisexual in a lengthy caption that shared his own struggles marrying his religion and sexual orientation. The singer, who comes from a practicing Mormon family, didn’t know exactly what to call the metamorphosis he was undergoing as a young teen on the show. “My parents never talked to me about puberty,” he says. “I didn’t know what wet dreams were. I didn’t know what arousals were. I didn’t know that hair was going to be growing in parts of my body. All that was foreign to me. I didn’t know. And so I was freaking out.”
He went on to say that he looks back at parts of his time on the show as “traumatic” and “miserable.” He recalled to the outlet having several finalist friends who had nervous breakdowns on the show. But, he remains apprehensive to place blame for any mental issues on the environment of Idol.
“I get afraid to blame things on American Idol, because something in me is programmed to say, ‘I have to be grateful, because where would I be without it?’” Archuleta says. “But at the same time, I’ve talked to other American Idol contestants about how we all have trust issues. Like: ‘You can’t trust anyone anymore, not even your own family.’ That’s what we were told. It was like some weird grooming process, from the very first audition, the way that they were speaking to us, kind of like, ‘You’re powerless little bugs. If you step out of line, then you’re out of here, and you’re going to lose this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’”
