In his darkest hour, pop singer David Archuleta was so overwhelmed by feelings of shame and guilt over his sexuality that he reached the point of either admitting he was gay or ending his life. He grimly recalls this moment in his debut memoir “Devout,” which was released today via Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books, by detailing his plans to drive off a cliff amid his third engagement to a woman in 2020. “I’d prayed so many times,” he writes. “God had apparently given up on me.”
Up until that point, the 35-year-old had been known as the cherubic “American Idol” runner-up who briefly flirted with major chart success and moonlighted as a picture-perfect Mormon poster boy. But behind the veil of innocence were lifelong struggles: with his controlling father, who he realized years after “American Idol” had been emotionally abusing him; with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose firm stance against homosexuality pushed him deeper into the closet; and with his sexuality, which he first addressed publicly in a 2021 coming-out post on social media.
“I felt like I had to portray myself a certain way for so long, and now I can finally say hey, just like I came out, I want to be able to give the whole story in the full picture, because it’s not always daisies and roses to get to where you are,” Archuleta tells Variety. “And I felt like I had to present myself that way all my life. Especially as a Mormon and especially on ‘American Idol.’ I always have to be the sweet kid, always grateful for everything that was taking place, but I think a lot of people, especially the queer community who was watching, could relate because they could see the silent struggle that I was going through on a public level in front of millions of people and didn’t know how to process it all. That’s why I wanted a full picture.”
Archuleta tells his story as a now-ex-member of the Church, which he left in 2023. In “Devout,” he briefly recounts his time on “American Idol” but frames it around his overbearing father, focusing on how a false accusation of molestation against him forever strained the family’s dynamic. He writes of leaning on the Church and using the rigidity of its teachings to minimize the feelings it consistently told him were wrong, no matter how detrimental it was to his mental health. It reaches a crescendo as he comes to a crisis of faith, only for the Church to reject his pleas to reconsider its stance on the LGBTQ+ community.
Now, Archuleta has a newfound sense of liberation, having grappled with the heaviness of unraveling his foundation of faith. “I just feel motivated to keep moving forward and connecting with people who relate to whatever part of the journey they relate to,” he says, “whether it’s watching me as a kid on ‘American Idol’ or having a difficult parental relationship dynamic, growing up religious, trying to come out, whatever it is. I just hope I can connect with as many people as possible.”
What was the lightning strike moment for you where you realized you needed to start working on this memoir?
I think once I realized how many people were reaching out to me after I came out, I kind of just looked at it as, you know what? Okay, this is done. I’ll move on with my life. And I saw so many people who related to the story who wanted to know about it more and a lot of people asking me how to get there. And a lot of people already have, but it doesn’t hurt to help someone feel seen on their journey if they’re still working on it. Especially within the Latter-day Saint culture, there are many people who are still in this. I was seeing from all the DMs I was getting. And when I was still going to church, people were coming up to me and secretly trying to say, “I’m like you.” I just felt like this whole subculture that existed that I didn’t even know about, ’cause I was always the good Mormon boy. And so I never heard about people who were struggling… I was struggling too, but I never would dare admit that, you know? So I just realized, okay, this conversation needs to be had because so many people are unnecessarily struggling and there’s something that can be done about it, but people have to be willing to listen to the story.
It was hard to read about the dynamic between you and your father without you realizing it was emotional abuse. What was the experience like revisiting the epiphany around how your father had been treating you?
The moment of realization wasn’t hard to revisit because I had relived that, talked about it, I had processed it, and I was fully present by that point with myself, from that point on. It was having to revisit everything else prior to that that I’d blocked out, and that was hard. It was difficult because I didn’t understand. I was very confused. And I didn’t want to have to go back to that confused place as a young kid and as a teenager when I just didn’t have the tools to process it all. My feelings were still as if I were when I was a child. And I was very scared and very troubled and I wanted to run away from it. That’s how I handled it as a kid and that’s how I was able to process it and move on from it. So to have to go back as an adult was very difficult.
Your time on “American Idol” doesn’t take up much of the book. What are your feelings now looking back on that experience?
It’s an ongoing healing process for me because I wasn’t able to appreciate the experience at the time. All I knew was to smile and tell people how grateful I was to be there. When the reality was, I couldn’t wait for it to be over. There were times where I even considered running away. But I felt dutiful too. I was like, no, have a duty. People are counting on me and I, but I could care less. I was like, oh my God, I don’t care if I get to the end. I want this to be over with.
I had to go look at all the clips while I was writing the book because I had literally blocked it out. It was just cringe. It was the way I’d always felt about myself at that time. Like, I think I was holding on to the feelings that I had when I was going through it, which was, “That kid is so disgusting.” And it was the first time that I was able to look at those feelings, process them, and think, why do you feel that way about him? It was just a reality check. I was like, wow, I really hated myself during that time. But I was starting to realize, wait a second, David, that’s your reaction right now, but you don’t have to feel that way towards yourself anymore. We’ve worked through that.
As you’re writing “Devout,” are you thinking about how the Church is going to react to the way that you’re writing about them?
Yeah, I tried to be really intentional about the way I navigated that whole topic because I had a lot of frustration with the church, but it was my world, it was my community, it was my friends, it was my safe place for so many years. While at the same time, like there were reasons that I also felt I had to keep my guard up there because I hadn’t fully processed things about sexuality and they have a lot of opinions about people who are gay or queer. And I think they associate too much like, oh, if you’re gonna talk about sexuality, you’re really just referring to sex. And it was overlooked so much that it’s like, well, the gay identity and the queer identity is not just sex. It’s about human connection, it’s about companionship, relationships, and how you perceive the world.
My goal is to hold them accountable, but also have change. And I believe that there’s change. I feel like I make valid points that they have to consider. They must consider. If they are what they say that they are, which is that they want to do what God wants to guide all of God’s children, there are queer children of God always being made every day in the world, whether they accept it or not, like they are here. I’m hoping that this sets a fire for change and burns down unnecessary walls, and builds bridges in place of that.
After everything you’ve experienced, how are you doing now?
I mean, aside from the anxiety about this book coming out, I’ve been doing great. I know that people will always want to have an opposing opinion just because, that’s just how life is. I’ve watched it in sports. I watched it on “American Idol” with people picking their favorite and they want everyone else to be the bad guy. I’m like, man, does it always have to be like that?
I don’t want people to think my dad is this horrible, evil person anymore. I want people to see him as a human being as well, who just did the best that he could under his given circumstances and wanted to help his son be as best as he believed he could be. Those are the things I worry about. But with that said, I feel so just enthusiastic to live my life, to tell my story. I feel emboldened and I feel so confident in my skin and in my message. I’ve spent so many years reflecting on it and thinking about how to say it. I feel like I’m in a great spot.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
English (US) ·