Jackie Tohn Says Simon Cowell ‘Ripped Me to Shreds’ on American Idol

Jackie Tohn had a great experience on American Idol, but she wouldn’t try out again.

“First of all, I can’t. I’m 110 and I think the age drop off is the cutoff is 28,” the Nobody Wants This actress, 44, exclusively told Us Weekly. “Funny enough, when I tried out for the first time, when I was 28, I was the age cutoff. I was deadass the age of some of the 15-year-old contestants’ moms. And I was like, ‘Hello, do you have a cane?’ It was too much.”

Tohn added, “I would never try out again, nor could I, because I think you could do it twice and you can’t be old, right?”

Tohn appeared on season 8 of American Idol, which Kris Allen ultimately won over runner-up Adam Lambert, in 2009. Tohn finished in the Top 36.

According to Tohn, she was cut in part due to judge Simon Cowell’s brutal criticism.

“I think one of the major reasons I got eliminated was because he ripped me to the shreds after that,” Tohn said during the Thursday, November 7, episode of “The Viall Files” podcast. “It was so f—ing cool. I know it was a weird, charmed experience until it wasn’t.”

She continued, “That was a really weird year, where instead of picking 24, they were changing the format, they added Kara DioGuardi [as a judge], so it was Simon, Paula [Abdul], Randy [Jackson] and they added Kara.”

After Tohn and her fellow competitors made it to the Top 36, a selection of 24 were cut “immediately.”

“So many of us just got that hatchet,” she recalled. “My American Idol experience was so interesting and bizarre, but it was fun. That Top 36 f—ed us because … if there was a 24 and then two off per week, I have in very good faith I would have made the Top 24 and then I wouldn’t have been gone so quickly.”

Tohn still doesn’t know why she was eliminated, adding to podcast host Nick Viall that her overall experience was “so charmed.”

“I was like, ‘Is this what reality TV is?’ Everyone was cool with me,” Tohn said on Thursday’s episode. “Paula went on Late Night and Jay Leno was like, ‘Who’s your favorite?’ And she was like, ‘I can’t say’ and then looked at the camera and said, ‘It’s Jackie Tohn.’ I remember being like, ‘I’m about to win American Idol?’ and then the Top 36 [twist] entered.”