David Archuleta Extended Interview | ‘The Jennifer Hudson Show’ – powered by Happy Scribe
Our next guest rose to fame in 2008 at just 17 years old on American Idol. After struggling for years with his identity, he came out publicly and showed us it’s all OK to be who you are. Please welcome David Archuletta. I’m so happy to see you.
Oh, thank you.
I watched you grow up.
Oh, my gosh. Really?
Because he was only like 16 or 17 idol, right?
Yeah, I was 16.
How old are you now?
I’m 31 now.
31. He was such a mighty okay. And recently you came out publicly, like, how does that feel?
It’s been a process because for a while I grew up very religious and grew up Church of Jesus Christ, a Latter day Saints, a K Mormons. And for them, everything is about marriage, about being able to marry someone and procreate, essentially, because then that’s the closest you can become like God be creating life. And so I tried everything I could. I almost got married several times and they would always say, why are you so cold? Did I do something wrong? And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t desire them the way that they wanted to, the way they deserved, really. And so I was wondering, did I do something wrong? And so it’s been very interesting learning how to separate yourself from like, this is what I was taught. This is the most important thing you do. This is all that matters. And not be able to fit that mold. But I have been learning how to love myself and it’s been that’s the important thing.
Stepping away from the mortgage church, that was a hard decision made.
Yeah. I did have to take a step away, because after trying to talk to some of the church leaders and explain to them my situation, I realized there’s a lot of lack of understanding with LGBT people, because when I talked to them, it seemed like the assumptions were that LGBT people, all that they think about is sex, and it’s all about sex. And so people think it’s an evil thing. And so you think, there must be something evil about me and I need to change this about me. And no matter how hard you try, that’s why I was engaged. I got engaged three times and they were all wonderful girls, but you just think, I’m a failure. This evil is going to consume me, so what should I do? I don’t want to be evil in God’s sight. I don’t want to betray Him. So you start thinking, no matter how hard, no matter how much you pray, how much you fast, you start thinking, well, is it better if I just I’m not here anymore? You just consider because if I’m here, this is eventually going to explode out of me and I’m going to become evil.
And you don’t want that to happen. You want to be good with God. And so I was praying and praying and one day, I was just praying. I got on my knees and I said, God, if you’re really there and if you really have a purpose for me, just please take this from me. Please change me, because I don’t want to be a way I shouldn’t. I don’t want to be like this. And I don’t know why I am. And I just basically heard what I understood as what was always. God told me, David, you need to stop asking me this. You’re asking me the wrong thing because I don’t intend to change you. You’ve been spending over half of your life now praying about this, asking me to change something I don’t intend to change because I created you, I think. Yeah. And I just said, But I don’t want to mess up. And he said, well, perhaps you need to do what you think are mistakes and you’re going to realize that they weren’t mistakes. And to begin with.
I took you to be brave, to be dishonest. What about it made you want to share it? And what did you want to share?
Well, I realized when I was going through it, when I came out publicly, so I received thousands and thousands of messages, people going through the same thing saying, I’m the same way. And I’ve tried so hard to fit in, and I just don’t feel like there’s any way for me to belong, no matter how hard I try. So I realized there are so many people secretly scared of who they are, and they’re not bad people at all because when I met with the church leaders and they were like, well, don’t get married. You can get to know guys, but don’t get married because then you’re just having unnatural sex. And I was just like, it’s so interesting that you say you talk about marriage as if it’s only about sex because the way you’ve raised me to believe marriages, it’s a beautiful partnership where you want to share your life with them, help someone progress and help them reach their goals, create goals together, create a family. Even if it’s not the way that I was taught that it needed to look, you can still have a family being part of the LGBT community.
Fathomy tell me what that’s about.
Faith in me. It was basically I had actually written it like a year and a half ago, and it was just to be fun. It was like a fun, up tempo song about relationship. But now that I came out, I changed the verse, changed the prechourse to fit more where I am at in life now, change the production just to kind of explain the feeling of what it’s like to allow yourself to love who you naturally are attracted to and the excitement you can feel. I was like my first song, everyone knows Me from his crush. And I was like, I couldn’t ever really relate to it.
Right?
You all know the song fun. I wanted to capture the feeling of, like when you’re dancing in your bedroom, like no one’s watching. So I wanted that song to kind.
Of look at that. Yeah, it translates.
It reads, thank you.
This is another fun yeah.
That’s a bedroom scene.
Giving your best life. Yes. David wants to say look. Okay. So you’re kicking off your christ tour. Tell us about that. That’s exciting. Yeah.
I do christmas shows, like every year. They’ve always been my favorite ones to do. I have two christmas albums. So I’ll be going to west mostly. Utah, nevada, arizona, texas.
Sounds like fun. I’m going to make sure I get to that. That’s going to be awesome.
Thank you.
Now, like I said, I remember you were like 16 when you started your season idol. I was on season three and you used to watch me for how were you? I used to somewhere out there.
Yeah, but I’m going to sound weird now, but when I was watching you, I don’t know if any of you all experienced this when jennifer was on, but I was so invested when you were singing and a lot of people from my when I watched, I didn’t know that was going, oh, my god. But people knew me for imagine. And the time I first started singing that song was when I watched you perform imagine during the semifinals of your season. And I tee boat every single performance of hers and I’m going to send.
Her because I’m like I did.
You saying imagine anything. I believe in you and me and you saying, baby, I love you. And you saying you better know circle alive. And you’re saying no one else on us. And then of course we can in new england. And I watched all of them and I was a bad kid because I downloaded them on LimeWire when you’re not supposed to. That was bad. But I didn’t know any better. But I was like, I need to listen to these. When I’m rollerblading in my neighborhood, this was like my master class, y’all.
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