Adam Lambert wasn't sure he would "be able to do" 'American Idol' after coming out as gay.
The 41-year-old star shot to fame on the show in 2009 when he was 26, eight years after he came out in high school, but he was wary about taking part in the series - on which he finished runner up of the eighth season - because he didn't think other homosexual contestants had been "taken seriously".
In a new video profile with Them, he said: "I started pretty early kind of understanding that I was probably different than the other boys in school.
"I don’t think it really clicked for me until I was in about sixth grade. And I started going, ‘Oh, Ok. Got it.’ Like this is how I’m wired.
"I never thought that it was a show that I’d be able to do. A - I’m a theatre kid. Also, I’m gay, which never seemed to really land very well in that show.
"I mean, there definitely were a few, but they all kind of got not taken seriously."
During American Idol's eighth season, photos of Adam kissing an ex began to circulate online, and he admitted the show's publicist was "so great" at dealing with it.
He added: "Then the publicist for the show had called me before to say, ‘Hey, I don’t know if you saw this.’
"And I said, ‘Yeah, I saw it.’ And she was so great. She was like, ‘Well, how do you wanna deal with it?’
"And so I just said to a reporter, I’m like, ‘Yeah. That’s me.’ That’s all I said.
"I think I lost some fans at that point, but I always said to myself, ‘Well, those aren’t the fans I want anyway.' "
Last February, Adam admitted he felt "ashamed" of who he was when photos of him kissing a man leaked online.
He told People magazine: "It was like I was going backwards in some ways."
But the 'Whataya Want from Me' singer ultimately came out "stronger".
He said: "It made me stronger and informed the kind of art that I wanted to make."
