American Idol producer rejects Adam Levine’s call for more openly gay contestants
Yesterday, in an interview for Out magazine, Adam Levine, a judge on NBC’s The Voice, called for the producers of American Idol to find more gay contestants. Today, the American Idol’s producer rejected the calls saying that sexuality doesn’t have anything to do with singing.
Yesterday, Adam Levine, front man of the band Maroon 5 and judge on The Voice told Out magazine: “What’s always pissed me off about Idol is wanting to mask that, for that to go unspoken,” Levine said. “C’mon. You can’t be publicly gay? At this point? On a singing competition? Give me a break. You can’t hide basic components of these people’s lives. The fact that The Voice didn’t have any qualms about being completely open about it is a great thing.”
American Idol’s executive producer Nigel Lythgoe has hit back telling Entertainment Weekly: “To be frank, I didn’t understand why we’re talking about contestants being gay or not gay. I don’t go into my dentist and say, ‘Are you gay’ I don’t say to contestants on So You Think You Can Dance, ‘Are you gay?’ What does it got to do with me? What does it got to do with anybody? When does privacy stop in this country? If somebody wants to say they’re gay, it’s up to them. You don’t expect us to turn around and say, ‘Are you gay?’ Why would we do that? — ‘By the way, he’s a Catholic and he supports Obama and here’s his sexuality’ — what does that have anything to do with singing talent? Maybe it does for Adam Levine, but not for me.”
When asked to comment on Adam Lambert, a past contestant of American Idol, who publicly came out as gay only after he the final, Lythgoe said: “He must have come out before being on Idol, he just didn’t talk about it on Idol. And why should he? Is every actor going on television going to say, ‘I’m only playing the part of a straight man, I’m really gay’? There’s no reason that I would see why anybody that goes on television should start coming out with who they are, what they are, what they’re sexuality is, who they’re going to vote for or what their religion is.”
