Carnie Wilson responds to ‘cruel’ comments on daughter’s ‘American Idol’ audition

Carnie Wilson wants to know: Where is the humanity?

“I just wanna say, we’re human, and the internet is so cruel. It can be so cruel,” the Wilson Phillips singer shared during Sunday’s “Music of the ’90s” panel at 90s Con in Hartford, Conn. Wilson was joined by her bandmates, sister Wendy Wilson and Chynna Phillips Baldwin, as well as Backstreet Boys member AJ McLean in discussing her daughter Lola Bonfiglio’s recent audition for American Idol.

A bright spot in the March 23 episode, Bonfiglio brought out the Wilson sisters and dad Rob Bonfiglio to sing the Wilson Phillips hit “Hold On” and got three yeses from judges Carrie Underwood, Lionel Richie, and Luke Bryan, sending her into the highly competitive Hollywood week of auditions. But that didn’t matter to some netizens, according to Wilson, whose “comments were really pissing me off, and I can’t respond.”

“Would you encourage a doctor’s son not to be a doctor? No. Would you ever say, ‘Don’t be a doctor because your dad’s a doctor’? Lola wants to be a singer, and they say these terrible things, and she was so hurt,” she explained.

Following a solo performance of Kacey Musgraves‘ 2019 song “Rainbow,” Bonfiglio received some constructive feedback from the judges. Richie suggested that when Bonfiglio “sings the lead, hold the story out longer. It could have been the nerves, but you were getting to the end and just cutting it off.” Bryan added, “This competition is going to require you to belt, too, and let loose a little bit, filling up the room a little more.”

Nevertheless, all three judges praised the clarity of Bonfiglio’s voice and unanimously passed her to the next round of auditions.

“It was the scariest thing she ever has done. She was trembling with nerves, and she did great,” Wilson explained. “I’m so proud of her, and they asked us to sing, you know, so we came and crashed the party. I don’t think that Lionel and Carrie Underwood and Luke knew we were gonna be there, so that was fun.”

But Wilson wants people to remember that despite her daughter’s double pedigree (her famous grandfather is the Beach Boys bandleader Brian Wilson), “She’s an aspiring artist.”

Phillips Baldwin said she “read some [comments], too, and I think that we need to recognize there were beautiful comments…the majority of the comments were very supportive.”

Wilson explained, “I just want people to understand that it’s not all these happy glitter things. We’re real people with hearts and souls.”

Coincidentally, Wilson’s daughter will join McLean’s bandmate Brian Littrell’s son, Baylee, at Hollywood week. Father and son hit the Idol audition room on the season 23 premiere, where Baylee also won a unanimous “yes” from the judges after performing his own original song, “Waiting on Myself to Die.”

You can watch Bonfiglio’s full American Idol audition below.