‘Idol’s’ Fantasia says, ‘I always covered up everything so well’

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — August was supposed to be Fantasia Barrino’s comeback month. For three years, the “American Idol” winner and Broadway star had been working on her third album and selecting tracks that spoke to how far she’d come in her troubled life.

To outsiders, everything seemed to be on target for a successful late-August launch of her album, “Back to Me.” But behind the scenes, the 26-year-old singer, overloaded personally and professionally, said she felt like she wanted to “sleep forever.”

“I always covered up everything so well,” Fantasia said. “I’m always the bubbly life of the party. And for so long, I pushed and pushed and pushed. And, this day, I had no push in me.”

Before her overdose Aug. 9 grabbed headlines and lighted up the blogosphere, Fantasia barricaded herself inside a guest room in her Charlotte, N.C., house for three days — refusing to eat, drink or talk to anyone, even her mother, best friend and manager. The single mother couldn’t even face her 9-year-old daughter, Zion, who was being looked after by a cousin.

For months, Fantasia had denied rumors she was having an affair with a married man, Antwaun Cook. But photos of the couple surfaced on gossip pages, and Cook’s wife, Paula, filed for divorce, saying her husband had made a sex tape with Fantasia.

It took a team of lawyers, trailed by cameras for the second season of her reality show “Fantasia for Real” — which premieres Sept. 19 — to wrest her from her hiding place. Because of the litigation, Fantasia would say little about her relationship with Cook, but she acknowledged that the two had had an on-again, off-again relationship for 11 months and that she believed he was separated from his wife.

The meeting with lawyers that morning sent Fantasia over the edge. On the way home, she recalls telling her manager, Brian Dickens, she felt as though she were on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

“And he just said what they always say, ‘You got it, Tasia. It’s gonna be all right. You’re strong. Blah, blah, blah,’” she said. “And he just couldn’t tell that this day that wasn’t going to help. I didn’t want to hear that anymore. I’d been hearing that for years, and you gotta understand, I don’t have anybody to lean on. I’m the one — I’m the caretaker. I do everything.”

She wrote farewell letters to her three brothers, mother and daughter. She also texted her manager and her best friend that she loved them. Then she took “a lot” of sleeping pills and an entire bottle of aspirin.

When she awoke, Fantasia was angry to find herself alive and in the hospital. Two days later, she was discharged under the condition she undergo outpatient group therapy.

But just four days after her suicide attempt, another media frenzy erupted. This time, she had been photographed in a park near her house, filming scenes for her reality show with Cook.

When the Los Angeles Times asked Fantasia about it, she said those scenes had been filmed the week before she was hospitalized.

But after the Times verified with VH1 that the shooting indeed took place Aug. 13, Dickens, her manager, said that Fantasia had confused that day of shooting with a previous one. He added that Fantasia’s need for closure had surfaced in group therapy and that was the reason the singer had met with Cook. (That was the last time they saw each other, he noted.)

“They wanted me to be in (group therapy) much longer, but I realized that the record company and everybody was depending on me, and I had to come back,” she said. She plans to tour in November, something she’s been dreaming about for years. In the meantime, she says, she will continue to work on herself in therapy.

“I can make you this promise: I won’t do that again,” she said, fighting tears. “I gotta see my daughter walk across the stage and get her high school diploma and she’s got to go to college. ...It’s just me and her. There’s so much I want to do. I can hang in.” She paused and added, “I got it.”

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