Talent Recap / YouTube Margie Mays
T”American Idol” alum Margie Mays may not have made it to the live shows on either of her two “Idol” runs, but that hasn’t slowed her down one bit. The singer announced this week that she has been nominated for The 2022 BroadwayWorld Los Angeles Awards in the category of Best Performer in a Musical. Mays starred as Elle Woods in “Legally Blonde: the Musical” earlier this year at the Cupcake Theater in Los Angeles.
“I mean I couldn’t resist when I saw my name up ON THAT LIST. The best revenge is just living your best life, guys. Follow your bliss. Would tell this story over and over again if I could. Thank you @officialbroadwayworld for the nomination 🫶🏻,” Mays wrote in an Instagram post to celebrate the occasion.
Margie Mays is Asking Fans to Vote For Her
Winners of the 2022 BroadwayWorld Los Angeles Awards are determined by an online fan vote, so Mays is wasting no time asking fans to help get her the win.
“Since I never made it to the voting rounds on ‘Idol’,” Mays told fans in an Instagram story, “and you’ve all been waiting to be able to vote for me, you should vote for me for this.”
“American Idol” season 16 winner Maddie Poppe took to Instagram as well to help rally fan support for her friend, posting a video to her story where she tells fans, “One of my closest friends is nominated for an award! Best performer in a musical, and it was the best performer in a musical I’ve ever seen in my life.” Poppe shared the link to voting with her fans and tells them to vote for Mays. Poppe also teased an upcoming collaboration with Mays but didn’t elaborate.
Fans are excited for Mays, who leads her category with 12% of the overall vote at the time of publication. One fan wrote on Mays’s Instagram, “Best performance that just kept getting better and better!!!!!! Sooo proud and excited for you!!!😘🐶❤️😘🐶❤️”.
Margie Mays Auditioned For ‘American Idol’ Years Before Being on Back-to-Back Seasons
Although Margie Mays had not one, but two successful “American Idol” auditions, making it to Hollywood Week in seasons 17 and 18 of the show, but never advancing through to the live shows and viewer vote. These weren’t, however, Mays first attempts at getting on the show. In a YouTube vlog from 2020, Mays revealed that she had a “Trainwreck” audition for an “Idol” casting producer while a student in music school.
Mays said that she was walking past a small theater on the way to one of her classes one night when she saw that they were holding auditions for “America’s Got Talent” when she was approached by one of the casting producers, who also casts “Idol”, who was holding the auditions, who told her, “Good job tonight.”
Mays clarified that she didn’t audition and that he must be mistaking her for somebody else when the producer told her to hop on stage and sing something.
“Well let me tell you why preparation is important,” Mays says to viewers, “because in this moment I couldn’t think of a single song I knew!”
Mays says she went on to sing Etta James’s “At Last” and play on the piano, though she admits she “butchered” it, and even followed it up with another original, which she again “butchered”, but the producer gave her two more chances. After failing to think of a song she would be able to sing well, the producers ended her audition and told her outright that it was a “trainwreck”, but that she was entertaining the entire time, regardless of her singing.
The lesson Mays took away from this all is to always be prepared when going into an audition, and to not be afraid of failure.
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