Swapped emails with Mamaroneck’s Carly Rose Sonenclar, who is now through with boot camp on “The X Factor.” Here’s our Q&A. We’ll add some more answers later this afternoon, about last night’s duet with Diamond, so check back later for that.
Q: So, you sang a little Bruno Mars the other night, but we didn’t hear much of it. Did you kill it?
CRS: Thanks! I think it was a fun performance, and an important one. I am very happy with it.
Q: So take us into that room, at the Fillmore Miami Beach. Your mom said Day 1 of boot camp was actually many days boiled into 1 hour?
CRS: It was crazy, the pressure…there is no way to describe it. Waiting in that room, you could go on in 10 minutes, or 4 hours and you wouldn’t really know which. It was hard to stay focused the whole time.
Q: And you were sitting there, on stage, that whole time?
CRS: Yeah we had to sit on stage the whole time, except when they took the people around my age out..I think they did that it is hard to remember.
Q: You’ve been in front of audiences, but you had to be an audience for 119 other people over several days – on camera! Was it hard to be “on” that whole time?
CRS: Sitting there watching everybody was fun, but also nerve wracking and I think that was a big part of why we did it. We were there for hours, and you had to be ‘camera ready’ I guess you would say, the whole time. That was kind of hard, and at first they didn’t even let us have water on the stage, so if you wanted water you would have to go off the stage and sneak it back on. Shhh.
Q: There were a lot of tears in Wednesday night’s episode. Did that feel as awkward in the room as it did watching or was that done in editing?
CRS: If you saw somebody who didn’t give the performance they most likely wanted to give, it was hard to see them get defeated. Everybody was surprisingly supportive of each other contestant, and I think that helped make the real-time vibe much more pleasant, but for TV, they probably had to take a lot of that away to make it more intense.
Q: What was it like to watch the Whitney sing-off between Paige and CeCe? They made it seem pretty dramatic.
CRS: This Whitney sing-off was quite interesting to watch because they really did go right after each other. They both were quite different, and obviously very competitive. That day I left knowing which one I thought did better, but watching it back I changed my mind.
Q: Did you make friends with other singers?
CRS: Yeah, I made some really good friends with other performers. That is obviously part of the struggle is seeing somebody you got very close with get sent home. These are relationships I will never forget though, as well as experiences.
Q: They went from 120 to 60 last night. Did you lose friends?
CRS: I will never forget because it is such a surreal experiences and we are all kind of going through it together.
Q: Which was harder: Your auditions for Broadway, say, or boot camp day one?
CRS: Boot camp day one was harder, I think. You are being judged by four of the biggest names in the music industry, and you have all your competitors watching you!
