Paula Goodspeed: how a stalker ended up on ‘American Idol’
In the 2020s, reality television has continued to dominate the airwaves and has become even more inauthentic.
Pretty much everything is, if not scripted, at least engineered. It’s why so much of the acting on these shows (and it is acting) feels like bad improv. These are people who have been given bullet points to reach in a conversation, awkwardly stumbling towards them while never in their lives being trained to do so. There may be a few kernels of realism hidden within all the artifice, but they are few and far between.
To be clear, this isn’t actually a criticism of it. God knows there are still a myriad of problems with reality TV, but the least of those problems comes from how “real” the whole thing is. Principly because we know exactly how bad things can get when reality TV has a capital R, as that was how the whole genre worked when it first came to prominence in the 2000s. Producers were looking for real people and real reactions, and oftentimes it got much too real.
Case in point, in 2005, American Idol was arguably the biggest show in America, and one of its judging panel was singer, songwriter and choreographer Paula Abdul. Now, anyone who knows the Idol franchise knows that, in its prime, the most infamous part of the show were its auditions. You want to talk about realism? How about the fact that the producers of the series cherry-picked its worst submissions, talked them up as people with a real shot just to humiliate them in front of millions on TV?
People like Paula Goodspeed. Who had that first name for a very, very specific reason.
How did Paula Goodspeed end up on a reality show?
Paula Goodspeed was born Sandra May McIntyre on July 4th, 1978. When she was ten-years-old, Paula Abdul’s first album Forever Your Girl dropped, and her life changed forever. Abdul’s music spoke to her entirely, and McIntyre became obsessed. As a result, she decided to follow in her hero’s footsteps and become a pop singer herself, modelling her entire look, voice and personality after her hero to the extent that when she turned 16, she changed her name to Paula Goodspeed.
Unfortunately, Goodspeed’s career didn’t take off in the same way. In fact, she never ended up releasing any music. The closest she came was submitting an audition tape to American Idol when Abdul joined the judging panel. A tape that the producers saw and thought would be worthy of humiliation for the benefit of those watching at home. She auditioned with a spirited, shall we say, version of ‘Proud Mary’. To open derision from the other judges and a few sympathetic looks from Abdul herself, she was given three no’s and eliminated from the competition.
However, Goodspeed now felt like she had an in with her hero and began trying to forget a connection with Abdul. That was probably the way she saw it, but to everyone else on the planet, she began stalking her. Over the next three years, barely a week went by without a letter, a call or even, in some frightening cases, a visit from Goodspeed.
It got so bad that Goodspeed began impersonating Abdul’s loved ones to try and trick the pop legend into contacting her. Every attempt Goodspeed made to contact her was met with threats of police action and eventually, it must have sunk into her that there was no way she’s ever have a personal connection with her hero.
Then, tragedy struck. On November 11th, 2008, Paula Goodspeed was found dead in her car of an apparent overdose, parked outside Abdul’s house in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles. The producers of American Idol swore blind that they had no idea how much of a fixation Goodspeed had on Abdul when they brought her onto the show. However, Goodspeed made it very clear just how much of an influence Abdul was on her life to anyone who’d listen. While Goodspeed was an adult whose actions were her own, she was clearly damaged, and those producers deserve some share of the blame as well.
So, the next time you roll your eyes at a clearly staged moment on Love Island, be thankful. It could be so, so much worse.