Kelly Clarkson was the first-ever American Idol winner on Sept. 4, 2002, and she has gone on to have one of the most successful careers of any Idol alum.

In 2018, sixteen years after she was crowned, she reflected on her big win in a candid interview with Entertainment Weekly.

Clarkson admits that she didn’t actually want to win the reality singing competition.

“I do remember [runner-up] Justin [Guarini] and I having a conversation before and I was like, ‘I don’t want to win, I don’t want to win,’ because we found out we had to do a movie,” she recalled a few years back.

“We just found that out Top 2 and he really wanted to do a movie and I really didn’t want to do it. I was like, ‘It’d be really super cool if I got second and you got first because the winner has to do the movie and the second one doesn’t.’ I won, so I had to do the movie.”

It isn’t that Clarkson isn’t a fan of movies, per se — she just would just rather watch them than star in them. During an interview with the Howard Stern Show, Clarkson further confessed that she tried everything she could to get out of doing 2003’s From Justin to Kelly.

“I cried so hard because I did not want to do that movie,” she said. “One, it wasn’t a good movie and two, I never wanted to be an actress. I literally was in Texas, in my apartment, crying in my closet talking to him [Simon Fuller] trying to hide from my family because I felt weak.”

She told Stern that she was so embarrassed of the film that she showed up to the premiere drunk: “I literally ended up in a fountain soaked. I was real hammered.”

Clarkson now has her own talk show, the Kelly Clarkson Show, but thankfully, that doesn’t require any acting. Don’t expect more movies in her future.

See American Idol Contestants Then and Now

Kellie Pickler Then

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Kellie Pickler Then

Kellie Pickler finished sixth during Season 5 of American Idol in 2006.

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Kellie Pickler Now

Kellie Pickler rose to fame during the fifth season of Idol and placed sixth. Today she is an actress, TV host and independent recording artist.

Kelly Clarkson Then

Kevin Winter, Getty Images

Kelly Clarkson Then

Kelly Clarkson won the very first season of American Idol in 2002.

Kelly Clarkson Now

Kevin Winter, Getty Images

Kelly Clarkson Now

When you think of American Idol, chances are, Kelly Clarkson comes to mind. She was a Season One standout after she serenaded the judges with “At Last” by Etta James and Madonna’s “Express Yourself” during the audition, She’s since become an arena headliner, mother, talk show host, actress and The Voice coach.