Allison Iraheta

American Idol
Q: What surprised you most about your ‘American Idol’ experience?

Allison: How hard it was! Seeing the show from a public view, it’s crazy. It looks hard but it’s not as hard as it really is when you’re on the show. So many things that go on backstage, behind the scenes, people don’t really know about. It’s really hard, not that it surprised me but it scared me.

Q: You were mentioning that a lot of stuff happens behind the scenes that fans don’t get to see. What sort of things go on behind the scenes?

Allison: Obviously, they’re not going to be recording us all the time, so there’s not a lot of time for them to film us. We stayed up onstage rehearsing group songs or our songs all night. Sometimes we would get home really late and we had to rehearse songs for next week and choosing songs was really hard because we didn’t know some of the songs that were being sent to us as well as recording the iTunes songs. The songs we were doing each week, we had to record them for iTunes and sometimes that took a long time and it’s pretty hard.

Q: Describe the cool mansion you got to live in as a finalist.

Allison: Oh man, that was crazy! We had a bowling alley, an indoor pool and an outdoor pool and the thing that made me even more crazy was they had toilets, of course they had toilets, but they had phones next to the toilets so when you’re using the bathroom you can call someone! I’d call Megan and be like ‘Girl, I’m in the bathroom right now!’ We definitely had too much fun in the mansion.

Q: Did you get to have somewhat of a normal life while living in the mansion, like could you go out at night or have friends come over?

Allison: Not at all, not at all. The rules of the mansion were strict. I think there was one day where we could have family only come to the kitchen but not upstairs to our rooms or downstairs or anything like that. They could only come into the kitchen and eat for a couple of hours and then we’d have to go back into our rooms. We could not leave. It was very strict.

Q: Was there a professional cook in the house or did everybody have to fend for themselves?

Allison: They actually had a cook come for us once a week. He came and he’d cook for us and it was glorious! We were living in a dream, we had someone cooking for us and we lived in a mansion but yet we were working so hard while we were in there so we had a lot going on for us.

Q: What did I hear about a ghost named Phyllis living in your room?

Allison: Oh, man! We heard noises sometimes. We never knew if it was downstairs because the house was full of people. We heard noises and I remember this one time, Megan was brushing her teeth in our bathroom - there were two huge bathrooms in our room. I don’t really remember what happened but Alexis named the ghost. She walked in and she didn’t hear something right, she was like ‘Who, what Phyllis!?’ We were talking about what if there were ghosts in the mansion and Alexis walked in and she’s like ‘What’s Phyllis?’ She thought she heard something but from then on we named a ghost, whether there was a ghost or not, we named a ghost that live in the mansion Phyllis.

Q: Describe what it was like to work with the show’s stylist.

Allison: That was a lot of fun. She pretty much let us choose what we wanted to wear and she tweaked it a little to make sure it was good for TV. It was a lot of fun to get to know what your real style was because that helped a lot.

Q: Did you get to keep all the clothes you wore?

Allison: Yeah, we did.

Q: Did you enjoy life on the road with the ‘Idol’ tour?

Allison: That was too much fun! It was only three of us girls and seven dudes and we had our own bus and the guys had their own bus and it was seven guys on the bus and three other guys from tour that were just there. On our bus it was three girls and three other girls, it was just six girls on the bus. We were the party bus! We had so much room. We weren’t that clean but we had a lot of fun in there. The guys, we’d make fun of them, we’d be like ‘That’s the stinky boys bus. It’s full of boys in that bus, it’s rank in there!’ So we’d make fun of them and we were just all family and the best part of tour was the fact that we all got along and it was just amazing.

Q: Besides hanging out with the other ‘Idol’ contestants, how did you pass the long hours on the tour bus traveling from place to place?

Allison: Be asleep in bunks, we rarely slept in our bunks though. We’d go to the back and watch TV or Megan would put some music on and we’d dance in the back of the bus. We’d mess around, I mean we had fights with the bands as well so the band would come in and they silly stringed us one time, we’d have fights in the back of the buses. Man, it was craziness.

Q: Are you planning to tour again anytime soon?

Allison: Yeah, right now we’re doing a promo tour so we’re getting the album out there, making sure people know about it and hopefully the real thing comes up soon where people actually want to see me for me!

Check out www.allisoniraheta.com for more info on Allison and her rockin’ album ‘Just Like You’!

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