Rylan Clark has admitted he suffered behind-the-scenes “trauma” competing on The X Factor.
The presenter shot to fame following his stint on the music competition show back in 2012.
Now, the 25-year-old has shared that he suffered PTSD from being branded the “joke act.”
In the final episode of his travel series, Rob And Rylan’s Grand Tour, he admitted he was forced by the judges to perform songs he was not comfortable with.
Rylan confessed: “Every week I was thrown into the lion’s den doing stuff that I didn’t know.”
“It’s like an internal thing now, when you’ve been through that experience.”
“Once you’ve been through that, when someone goes, ‘Go on, just do it’, it makes me go, ‘I can’t, I can’t just go and do it’.”
“I feel like I’ve worked so hard to move away from that ‘f*****g idiot” that I was perceived as, that character who couldn’t sing. That can f**k someone up majorly,” adding that he now “hates being made to sing” at all.
In the final episode of the show, Rob surprises Rylan with the chance to sing with an opera concerto.
However, the presenter refused as he admitted the experience brought back memories from his time on the show.
He continued to speak about how the show affected his life later on: “My job on X Factor wasn’t to be the singer, so I played that role.”
“My job was to be the joke act, the one everyone would speak about and be on the front page of the paper every day.”
“If I’ve learned anything on this Grand Tour, it is that there’s more to me than that.”
He added: “I’m not thick, I’ve got more to give than just being that idiot on the telly with the shiny teeth.”
Back in February, Rylan opened up about his breakdown: “I had to learn to talk and move again.”
The This Morning presenter revealed how he rebuilt his life following the breakdown of his marriage with Dan Neal.
In 2022, the former X Factor star revealed he tried to take his own life after splitting from his ex-husband.
In his book Ten: The Decade That Changed My Future, Rylan revealed Dan left him after he told him he had been unfaithful “years ago”.
He wrote: “I woke up one morning and decided to tell my now ex that I had cheated on him, years ago. I’m not sure why it was that time, or that day I had to do it. But I did.”
“He left. Told me it was over and that was that. You’re not surprised? I get that. But I couldn’t believe it.”
Rylan said that after Dan left him, he would go to sleep praying “I wouldn’t wake up,” and that he then tried to end his life.
The presenter admitted: “For the first time in my 32 years, I felt I couldn’t carry on no more. ‘What’s the point?’ I thought. I’d lost what I thought was everything, the one thing I always wanted. A man I loved. A family of my own. And now it was gone.”
“So I tried to end it. I won’t go into detail as I don’t think it’s fair on my mum, but thank God I was unsuccessful.”
However, Rylan has turned his life around and those dark days are far in the past, with Rylan back at the top of his TV game having made £2.5m in the past year.
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