David Hernandez "Comes Out" About His Stripper Past

American Idol contestant, David Hernandez, who was the first of the Top 12 to be voted out of the competition last night, returned home to Glendale, Arizona, today where The Arizona Republic scored an interview with him.

In the interview David was very upfront about his past as a stripper and how much the American Idol producers knew the whole time. Hernandez claims that the producers of the show knew about his past work the entire time he was a contestant.

“If they weren’t comfortable with it, I wouldn’t have been on the show,” he told the media Thursday during a conference call the day after his exit from the program. “The media can be vicious sometimes. Thank God I have a thick skin and a great family behind me.”

Hernandez went on to say that the rest of the American Idol cast was very supportive of him during the time of the negative publicity that surrounded the revelation of his work history.

“When I was in the media for a while, all the contestants were upstairs in the red room, huddled around me, and they gave me a big hug,” he said. “They said, ‘Don’t you get on the Internet,’ and, ‘We’re not going to worry about any of that stuff.’ It’s really like a family.”

David says that he thinks his departure from the show was more a result of song choice than it was of negative publicity resulting from his stripper past.

“I actually think that everything that is happening is based on song selection,” said Hernandez, whose final televised performance was a cover of the Beatles’ I Saw Her Standing There. “People’s personal lives should not influence their musical careers.”

David remains upbeat and positive about his future saying that he plans to try to secure a major-label record deal and perhaps perform on broadway at some point (surprise). First, however, he’s going to hit the gym and get his tan back.

We wouldn’t expect anything less David.