EXCLUSIVE: Constantine Maroulis talks Broadway acting, American Idol exit ahead of Jacksonville show

JACKSONVILLE, Fla — Tony-nominated actor and former American Idol contestant Constantine Maroulis will be coming to Jacksonville at the end of June. He will be at the Florida Theatre on June 26 as part of the Jacksonville Rock Orchestra’s A Night of Symphonic Rock. I got the chance to chat with Maroulis ahead of his upcoming show to talk about his Idol elimination and being nominated for a Tony.

The week he was eliminated from the popular singing competition, Maroulis sang Nickelback’s How You Remind Me; however, it wasn’t his first choice. “[T]he show went into the stratosphere in those first couple of weeks of our season. They obviously had a very successful season one, two, and three, but it just went to a different galaxy come season four, where they like rolled out all these massive sponsors and the money and the viewership was just nuts. But it was like the digital age was just really starting, you know, iTunes and such, and they were still protective over catalog stuff,” said Maroulis. “Bon Jovi’s like, ‘I don’t know if I want them doing my song,’ not realizing at the time that like, even if Sanjaya [Malakar from season six] hammers your song, it’s going to be huge for the digital spike [...] everyone will go back to your original, not that he needs it. [...] So a lot of people were like...no one knew the impact of, like, these songs could be, so they were protective. So there’s really like a pretty strict, cleared list, and then on most occasions, you had to go out and try to clear the songs, and that’s what happened to me the night I went home. I couldn’t get the U2 song I wanted.”

Which song did Constantine want to sing instead of Nickelback? You can find that out in the full interview.