Don Philip: X Factor “Bullied” Gay Admission, “They Set Me Up,” Now I’m “Suicidal”

September 15, 2012 by Hollywoodite

This week is the season premiere and beginning of the auditions of The X Factor USA on which several of the contestants are already standing out for the wrong reasons. Including a singer who performed (what appears to be) the only credited duet on Britney Spears’ 1999 debut album Baby One More Time, a song called I Will Still Love You (feat. Don Philip).

Asked recently by Access Hollywood, before the episode aired one can assume, whether she’d run into anyone from her past as did Christina Aguilera encounter a fellow former Disney Mousketeer on The Voice, Tony Lucca, whom Aguilera apparently didn’t recognise, Spears replied “Um, no, actually. I haven’t. No.” But she had, she’d seen Philip and she seemed underwhelmed.

Philip, a 32-year-old New York-based vocal coach, auditioned in San Francisco where he appeared to break down onstage and off. It quickly became apparent from audience accounts that he came out as gay onstage and that his confession was edited out of this week’s broadcast along with about “10 minutes of his interview,” Philip explained to Access Hollywood. He says he was too “distraught” to sing at the time, his voice “froze,” and that’s why his voice sounded so bad now compared to 1999. Moreover, he says, he was “bullied” into publicly coming out on television by producers and the judges after which he’s had problems with his family and thoughts of “suicide.”

“It was kind of a private thing they forced out of me,” Philip told Access Hollywood on Thursday. “I would say bullied out of me.”

He continues, “Backstage, I’d talked to the producers about what was my secret was. And I mentioned that my secret was I was gay, but I really didn’t want to talk about it on the show. So, minutes later when I got on stage, L.A. Reid said, ‘What’s the secret? What’s the secret?’ over and over again. And I had to say it. I just felt like they were going to say it so I felt like I needed to say it first.”

Explaining why he sang badly, he says, “I was just so emotionally distraught, I couldn’t pull it together to actually sing.”

Philip also spoke to the New York Post. Whose report opens with the admission that the audition, as broadcast, was “heavily edited” from what actually happened during filming at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, CA in June.

Philip told the NYP, “I think they were scared I was going to kill myself. After that thing, I went home and had thoughts of [suicide]. I was so destroyed that they set me up.”

Philip, 32, says he confided in producers that he was gay but didn’t expect it to be discussed on the show.

“When I got on stage, [the judges] chimed in saying, ‘What is your secret?’ ” Philip tells The Post. “I knew immediately what they were talking about. I only had one secret.”

Philip, a vocal coach in New York, left Spears visibly shaken when he told her: “I didn’t think you thought it was OK that I am gay.” She responded: “I think it is fine that you are gay.”

The singer then began crying onstage, telling his former singing partner: “I never thought I would see you again.”

Philip said his voice “froze” when he began to sing and the judges voted unanimously to send him home.

After the audition, he is seen dropping to his knees in the hallway, crying: “I think I have hurt [Spears].”

Much of the scene was left on the cutting room floor, a show source says. But Philip says that made him even more angry.

“It makes it kind of worse,” he says. “My mother has still not spoken to me. It is like I went through all this [coming out] for nothing. Everyone knows I am gay now.” – via The New York Post.

In response to his interviews with the media, FOX issued a statement denying any wrongdoing: “The judges were not given any information at all about Mr. Philip prior to his audition. The personal information that Mr. Philip quickly volunteered at the start of his audition was a surprise to the judges, who asked what had happened during the past 10 years, as they were interested in Mr. Philip’s career. While we understand his decision to discuss his personal life, Mr. Philip’s sexual orientation was not something that any of the judges or producers felt was relevant to this audition. When advertising and promoting open auditions, thousands of people are informed about the ways to enter the show. Mr. Philip himself chose to enter for a chance to win a five million dollar recording contract.”