AS the opening sequence of last Wednesday’s crucial episode of “American Idol” began to air, Felicia Barton started to tear up.
The 26-year-old mom from Virginia Beach, Va., was about to re-live being sent home a month earlier by the show’s famously contentious panel of judges – after coming thisclose to making the semi-final Top 36.
In a long and emotional posting on her Facebook page over the weekend, Barton’s husband Loren told how she got a startling phone call in the middle of the show telling her that she was back in.
SEE MORE PHOTOS JOANNE PACITTI
The posting has since been taken down – most likely on orders from “Idol” producers who exercise near-complete control over what contestants can say.
The couple, the husband wrote, had gone to watch the show at their church, Freedom Fellowship, with friends, knowing the outcome would be disappointing.
“Sure enough,” Loren wrote, “smack dab in the middle of 150 viewers that were gathered at Freedom to watch the show, Ken Warwick (executive producer for ‘Idol’) called Felicia’s phone.
“She ran into the girl’s bathroom to take the call, and she was bouncing off the walls when Ken told her to pack her bags, because she was now in the Top 36!”
Earlier, “as the show began, I could see Felicia’s eyes watering up as she sat, prepared to relive her Great Disappointment.”
On the phone in the bathroom, Warwick swore Barton to secrecy until the show’s producers made the shocking news public the next day.
“We had to [pretend] as if she never got the call!” writes Barton’s husband.
The news, of course, was that the best-known of the early “Idol” contenders, Joanne Pacitti, had been ruled ineligible for the show – apparently because of her personal ties to people in the show’s production company, 19 Entertainment, and the appearance of favoritism.
Pacitti has been “laying low,” according to the status update on her Facebook page.
“WHEW-craziness!” she wrote in a short, upbeat entry that has since been taken down also.
“But everything happens for a reason. STILL NOT GIVING UP . . . you guys know me better than that,” Pacitti wrote.
One good thing to come out of her departure from “Idol,” says Pacitti’s mother.
The young singer has been dating one of the professional dancers from “Dancing with the Stars,” Mark Ballas.
Now, the mother said, they don’t have to keep it secret any more.
M.J. Santilli writes about “Idol” for mjsbigblog.com.