Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
DESPITE her Cinderella-like rise to fame, Fantasia Barrino's life has hardly been a fairy tale.
Before winning the "American Idol" crown in 2002, she was raped in high school, which led to her dropping out. Later, she became an unwed mother at 17.
But with a successful debut R&B album that defied the "Idol" curse, selling 1.7 million copies last year, and a new, self-titled hip-hop record out Tuesday, 22-year-old Barrino is getting closer to living happily ever after.
Barrino attributes her success to two notions: "Dreams can come true" and "There are second chances in life."
"I made some good and bad decisions that I wished I didn't make," she says. "In the end, America allowed me a second chance. They didn't look at my past and try to punish me. We all fall down, but we can get back up."
The scriptwriters of the highly rated TV biopic "Fantasia: Life Is Not a Fairy Tale," however, suggested viewers and "Idol" executives weren't that forgiving.
The movie, which debuted in August and repeated Thanksgiving night, showed producers pressuring her to quit because of her past. The scene sets up a flashback to her hard-knock upbringing in rural North Carolina - but according to both sides it's pretty much fiction.
"I can say absolutely nothing was done, or even remotely suggested to her, that she shouldn't take part in the competition," says executive producer Ken Warwick.
Barrino agrees, saying no "Idol" producer ever recommended she quit the show.
"I was the only contestant catching hell from the public," she says. "The producers took me aside ... they let me know that I was losing votes because of what was being said. In the TV movie, it was made into a bigger thing for the drama."
Not letting the facts get in the way of a good story seems to be something Barrino is comfortable with. Her father filed a $10 million libel suit against Simon & Schuster, the publisher of her autobiography, also called "Life Is Not a Fairy Tale."
Among the complaints filed in Joe Barrino's suit are passages that suggest he put more value on his children's musical careers than their education. The book also says he asks Fantasia for money whenever she visits him.
But because the book was ghostwritten and based on interviews with her family, Fantasia is not listed as a defendant in the lawsuit.
"I allowed the ghostwriter to talk to my mother, my grandmother and my father," Barrino says. "Whatever was said came from their mouths. Everything in the book is the truth."
Still, even if everything in the book is truthful, she says the media still exaggerated facts, like her literacy.
In a TV interview on ABC's "20/20," she spoke about her inability to read contracts.
"The media made their own story about how I couldn't read or write at all," Barrino says. "I wasn't a strong reader, but that didn't mean I couldn't read."
Meanwhile, after several stormy relationships, Barrino says she's found "a real nice guy who's not in the music business."
Her newfound happiness can be heard on "Fantasia," where she croons to hip-hop beats created by collaborators that include Missy Elliott, Swizz Beatz and OutKast's Big Boi.
"I've been through some hard times, and this album [is about] me coming to the next level," she says. "I'm just 22 years old, I feel hot, I feel sexy - this is a brand new me."
dan.aquilante@nypost.com
Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
