I think there are a lot of people who are afraid to be who they are, and if I have to sacrifice a little bit of fame and a little bit of success because I'm being 100 percent truthful with who I am, hopefully that will create a paved way for someone else.
Now I've devoted my life to making sure that I can be a trailblazer for any other African American kids or any other gay kids or any other kids that just feel weird or uncomfortable and have their own issues and don't know how to express themselves. I want to be like a beacon for those kids now.
My whole right arm is tattooed in honor of 'Wizard of Oz.'
I'm a huge fan of Beyonce for so many reasons, and not the reasons that most people are. There's the obvious reasons - she's gorgeous, she's talented or whatever, but I think she's really super-consistent.
We live in America where each and every person has the equal opportunity to take their iPhone or a smartphone and create something and put it online and have the equal ability to blow up and be successful. It's a tool I hope we inspire tons of people to pick up and go after their dreams.
I don't know a kid who grew up in the '90s who wasn't obsessed with Disney, and I guess I never grew out of that phase, honestly. It's not just Disney: it's anything that has to do with fairytales for me. I think I just have Peter Pan Syndrome or something.
The number one question I'm asked as a YouTuber every day is, 'How can I get my videos out there; how can I make my videos go viral?'
Growing up in the Bible Belt of Texas, I thought for sure there was no way - if I'm 100 percent true to myself and come out as a gay, African-American person in 2015 - that people are going to be able to accept that and understand it.
I will always come back to YouTube because that's where I started.
I come up with the ideas for my videos, and I write the lyrics and choreograph them, and I direct them and tell everyone what to do and how I want them to sing the parts and do the tongue pops and eye rolls and stuff like that.
People go to YouTube to laugh, and as a YouTuber, your job is to figure out a niche and feed people what they want to see. Now that I know what kind of stuff people want to see, then I will keep going down that road and creating videos that are going to make people laugh.
That's the beauty of YouTube. You can take whatever you want and create a video from your home and put it up, and you're just sharing it with your friends.
The show is called 'Todrick,' and the show follows my life and the friends that I've gathered over the past few years making YouTube videos. Every week, we're taking a brand new concept - a brand new original song, brand new hair, makeup, choreography, and making a video come to life on our shoestring budget.
I think, hands down, the number one person I would love to have in a video is Beyonce. I think the perfect video for me - I could die happy and I could never make a YouTube video again - would be to do a video called 'Bey-Oz-ce' and mix 'The Wizard of Oz' and Beyonce together because those are my two favorite things in the world.
That was very difficult for me on 'American Idol' to feel like I had to be a certain way. It wasn't that the producers were saying that you shouldn't be gay or whatever, but there was this unspoken energy around saying you have to appeal to Middle America, and Middle America at that point was not ready for all that.
I worked with Kathy Rigby, and it's a concept called 'Peter Perry': it's all of Katy Perry's songs telling the story of Peter Pan. Kathy was so sweet, and it was such a cool experience to meet her and work with her and use the set that I had watched on television for so many years.
I was introduced to theater by a teacher that found me when I was in elementary school. She tested me for the Gifted and Talented program, started taking me to see the 'Nutcracker Ballet.' I got involved.
When I was 20 years old, my mom flew me for my first Broadway audition for 'The Color Purple,' and I only found out about it because I knew that Fantasia was in it, and so I went online to ActorsEquity.com. I was not a part of the union, but I flew there for the audition, and the next week I made my Broadway debut!
I would love to be in 'Wicked': that's my dream show. I don't care if I'm just the guy who is swirling the ribbon at the beginning of 'One Short Day,' I love that show; I love the message of the show, and I would love to be in it some day.
A lot of the people who have been on 'American Idol' have unfortunately not been very successful after the show is over. I would be one of the most successful contestants to not make it to the Top 12. So that would be a good statistic to throw into the show. It's what you make of it.
