American Idol has helped many accomplish their dreams, but it was also a place where a lot of those dreams ended up in the shredder. In fact, one contestant said that she will never audition for the show again.
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"First of all, I can't. I'm 110 and I think the age drop off is the cutoff is 28," Jackie Tohn told Us Weekly. "Funny enough, when I tried out for the first time, when I was 28, I was the age cutoff. I was deadass the age of some of the 15-year-old contestants' moms. And I was like, 'Hello, do you have a cane?' It was too much."
Tohn added, "I would never try out again, nor could I, because I think you could do it twice and you can't be old, right?"
Tohn appeared on Season 8 of American Idol. While Kris Allen took hom the win, Tohn barely cracked the Top 36. She said that Judge Simon Cowell was savage on the show and ripped her to shreds.
"I think one of the major reasons I got eliminated was because he ripped me to shreds after that," Tohn said. "It was so f—ing cool. I know it was a weird, charmed experience until it wasn't."
'American Idol' Contestant
She continued, "That was a really weird year, where instead of picking 24, they were changing the format, they added Kara DioGuardi [as a judge], so it was Simon, Paula [Abdul], Randy [Jackson] and they added Kara."
"So many of us just got that hatchet," she recalled. "My American Idol experience was so interesting and bizarre, but it was fun. That Top 36 f—ed us because ... if there was a 24 and then two off per week, I have in very good faith I would have made the Top 24 and then I wouldn't have been gone so quickly."
Still, it was an eye opening experience on American Idol.
"I was like, 'Is this what reality TV is?' Everyone was cool with me," Tohn said on Thursday's episode. "Paula went on Late Night and Jay Leno was like, 'Who's your favorite?.' And she was like, 'I can't say' and then looked at the camera and said, 'It's Jackie Tohn.' I remember being like, 'I'm about to win American Idol?' and then the Top 36 [twist] entered."
