Cameron On Quitting Glee Project: It Wasn’t About “The Silly Kiss”

This week’s The Glee Project featured the ultra-dramatic exit of Cameron Mitchell, who quit the show even after Glee co-creator, Ryan Murphy,   asked him to stay.

The Huffington Post sat down with Cameron to get his thoughts on the competition, his decision to quit, Glee and more.

On Cameron’s motivation to walk away from the show:

I say it was a culmination of things. I don’t want people to think it was just about the silly kiss that I gave it up and quit. I worked incredibly hard and I think I deserved to be there. I worked all the way up until I left and I was passionate about it. I’m passionate about performing, even if it’s acting and I’m not very good at it. There was just this feeling that, “maybe this isn’t for you.” Coming from Texas, I was this naive little boy. I just love music, I’ve never acted a day of my life, I’ve never done anything. The other kids aren’t professionals but they’ve been doing other stuff. I was the kid with no idea. So on all the music videos I’m pulling all that out of my butt and trying to look cool. It came down to, “If this is acting and this is Glee, I love Glee and maybe in the future I’d love to do it, but right now I’m being led somewhere else.”

Cameron is really downplaying the kiss and the Christian stuff–he doesn’t mention religion at all in his answer to the question of why he quit. His conservative beliefs came up over and over again when he described on camera why some of the romantic/sexual themes he was expected to explore made him uncomfortable. Was he edited unfairly on the show?  Or is he trying to downplay his true feelings to seem like less of a “tight ass”?

Although Cameron fretted quite a bit during the competition about how his girlfriend would react to him kissing fellow competitors on camera, Cameron says, “I’m sure on the show it sounded like I was really worried about her, and I kind of was, but she was very cool with it and very understanding. We have a great relationship. She knew I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody.”

Cameron was a Glee fan before he auditioned.  His family can’t be too over-the-top conservative, because he watched the show with them. His favorite Gleekster season 1 was Artie, but in Season 2, Darren Criss caught his attention, “If I was a girl I’d so go after him. Or maybe a boy. (Laughs). If I got a chance to be a Warbler one day I probably would do it.”  Darren was also his favorite mentor, “I felt like he understood me as a guy who listens to different music and dresses different. Right from the beginning we clicked.”

Read the entire interview at Huffington Post. See the recap of this week’s The Glee Project HERE.

About mj santilli 34831 Articles
Founder and editor of mjsbigblog.com, home of the awesomest fan community on the net. I love cheesy singing shows of all kinds, whether reality or scripted. I adore American Idol, but also love The Voice, Glee, X Factor and more!