James Reid revealed he stopped schooling because of this “awkward situation” he encountered at school.
The singer-actor recently guested in the weekly podcast “Fun With Dumb”, where he talked about his second album, music and acting career, and Filipino culture, among others.
Along the interview with hosts Korean-American hip hop artist Dumbfoundead, Steffie Baik, and the Year Of The Ox’s Lyricks, James reminisced that he briefly went to school in the Philippines when he was a teenager and opted for homeschooling instead.
“When I first went there (Philippines), I was 16, to go to school, I lasted like a month, because I look so different from everyone else in class,” said James, who is half-Filipino and half-Australian.
“It’s not even bullying,” James clarified while relating that he got weirded out after his schoolmates who apparently couldn’t get enough of his looks would take photos of him and sell them to others.
“I just felt awkward about it, because some kids would like, take photos of me in the classroom and sell it to other kids.
“It’s just really weird. Every time I come to school, people would like scream. And I was like ‘I can’t do this anymore’.”
James at the time, had not joined Pinoy Big Brother yet. After homeschooling for about a month, he got scouted to join the reality show’s Teen Clash Edition in 2010, where he emerged as the big winner and would later rise to popularity.
Meanwhile, a supposed schoolmate of James who confessed buying printout photos of James back in time, sent her apologies to the “u & i” singer and did a “photocards reveal” in a now-viral tweet.
“Sending my apologies to @tellemjaye , 13 years alter (smiling cace with tear emojis),” the Twitter user quipped.
“Hello! To clarify, I bought these and not sold them. These were printouts from his public friendster account before and not stolen pics by the seller.
“Not to justify also but to contextualize, we were also 12-13 at the time who didn’t know better. We don’t have the right platform to reach James but we are sorry for this!,” she added.
To which James replied with a face with peeking eye emojis.
