
Who won 'American Idol' Season 23? What do you get for winning 'American Idol'?
A new winner of "American Idol" has been chosen.
About 26 million votes were cast to select the 2025 American Idol and one contestant received a majority of those votes.
Breanna Nix was eliminated first about halfway through the finale, coming in third place on "American Idol" Season 23.
Besides former contestants, guests during the finale included Salt-N-Pepa, Jessica Simpson and Good Charlotte. Contestant Jamal Roberts performed with "artist in residence" Jelly Roll, John Foster went on stage with judge Luke Bryan and Nix sang with Brandon Lake.
Here's who the 2025 "American Idol" winner is, what the winners of "American Idol" get and what to know about your Season 23 champ.
Once the Top 24 singers have joined the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or AFTRA, which costs $3,000, then they earn $1,571 for a two-hour show, $1,303 for each one-hour episode and $910 for each half-hour episode, per 2016 numbers from TV Insider.
Contestants also receive a $400 wardrobe allowance per episode, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The winner of "American Idol" 2025 receives a recording contract and a cash prize. That amount has changed throughout the years, with season 16 winner Maddie Poppe getting $250,000 and season one winner Kelly Clarkson walking away with a $1 million recording deal with RCA Records.
The winner of "American Idol" 2025 is Jamal Roberts, a P.E. teacher from Mississippi.
Roberts is 27 years old.
There is no clear answer on how many votes Roberts received in particular, but 26 million votes were cast in total.
The runner-up of "American Idol" Season 23 is John Foster.
Foster is an 18-year-old from Addis, Louisiana.
Yes, season 23 of "American Idol" began March 2, 2025.
Season 24 of "American Idol" has already been in the works, according to Executive Producer Megan Michaels Wolflick. Thousands of submissions have already come in, but season 24 will likely not come out until 2026.
Almost paradise ... Why is Hannah Brown on 'Bachelor in Paradise'? When will 'Bachelor in Paradise' air?
If you're not able to watch live, "American Idol" Season 23 will be available to stream the next day on Hulu.
A subscription to Hulu costs $9.99 a month (or $99.99/year) for the ad-supported plan. Students can get Hulu with ads for $1.99 a month, and Hulu with no ads costs $18.99 a month.
Reach the reporter at dina.kaur@arizonarepublic.com. Follow @dina_kaur on X, formerly known as Twitter, and on Bluesky @dinakaur.bsky.social.
Subscribe to azcentral.com today.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Who won 'American Idol' last night? What to know about the 2025 winner
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How 'Will Trent' star Ramón Rodriguez became an industry game-changer
ABC's "Will Trent" is no ordinary police procedural. "There's a thousand cop shows," said Ramón Rodriguez, who portrays the show's main character, Will Trent. "How do you make this one stand out?" The broadcast drama series, which also airs on Hulu, centers special agent Trent: a dapper investigator whose instinctual crime-solving skills render him essential to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. But beneath the three-piece suit, there's a more complex side to Trent, who navigates the residual trauma from being abandoned at birth and growing up in the Atlanta foster care system. He is also dyslexic. "One of the exciting things when I came onto the show was not knowing where this character was from," said Rodriguez, 45. "Trent was very much [written as] a colorless character." Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Rodriguez greeted me on a Zoom call from his present home in Southern California, while wearing a New York Knicks cap. Before "Will Trent," he previously played the first main Hispanic character on the HBO series "The Wire," and appeared in films such as 2009's "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" and "G20," a thriller featuring Viola Davis, which premiered April 10 on Amazon Prime Video. Since the 2023 premiere of "Will Trent," Rodriguez has molded his beloved character in many ways; he's a hard-nosed detective with a mushy side, which is most evident in scenes with his pocket-sized chihuahua named Betty. Based on Karin Slaughter's New York Times-bestselling novel series "Will Trent," showrunners Liz Heldens and Daniel Thomsen organically tailored the titular role to reflect Rodriguez's real-life Puerto Rican identity. It's a major win for Latinos in an industry that otherwise lacks Latino-led programming. "Once we run out of feeling fresh, creative, excited and inspired, then I think we start phoning it in," said Rodriguez. "But that's something I'm not interested in and I know my partners aren't either." Rodriguez has taken on roles behind the camera as well. He directed "I'm a Guest Here," the first episode of Season 3, which wrapped earlier this month; he was also named an executive producer. "I really wanted to be a part of the creative collaboration of creating this character in this show," said Rodriguez. When Season 3 dropped a bombshell regarding Trent's biological father, it paved the way for a nail-biting Season 4, which was confirmed earlier this year. This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity. It also reveals Season 3 spoilers. In the books, Will Trent isn't Puerto Rican, but this series is peeking into your own Puerto Rican identity. What are your thoughts on that? It was a topic that they were curious about exploring. Where does Will come from as an orphan who grew up in the foster care system? Identity becomes a focal point for someone like that. Again [him being Puerto Rican] isn't in the books, which is kind of exciting. We've been able to separate and say that the books are the books. It wasn't something that we were trying to sort of check a box and say, "Great, Will's heritage is Puerto Rican." It was a very organic explanation of this character discovering who he is. When you were cast for the lead, did you ever picture the show as what it is today? You never know what's gonna work and why it's gonna work. You don't have control of a lot of things in this business. The one thing I do have control over is my work, what I can bring to it, what I try to do. This is the first time I've been on a show that's gone on for this long from the pilot. If you would've asked me that, is this gonna be the show that goes past one season? I probably would've said, "I don't think so." And it's nothing against the show, you just don't know. It took a minute for me to be fully convinced, but I'm so grateful that they were willing to continue having conversations with me and that they were really willing to have me on as a partner because that was important to me. It doesn't feel like the show hinges on those elements of identity. Why is it important to keep that balance in this procedural show? [Solving cases is] another aspect of the show that I know audiences love. I just think the things that tend to pull our hearts to the things that are emotional and personal things, what someone's struggling with or how are they overcoming it. In Season 3, we have a really pivotal moment where Will accidentally shoots a bad guy, but ends up killing a young boy by accident. That case ended up changing the rest of the season — he was not able to recover from that event of having the boy die in his arms. That was Episode 11 and that will likely go into Season 4. Your dog Betty also shines in Season 3. We get to hear her voice for the first time which happens during a fun hallucination scene. What was it like to film that episode? That was two episodes after this tragic episode I just described, which is crazy, right? We wanted to mix levity and humor with our heavy drama and emotional stuff. So as Will was entering this case that involved a cult, he gets caught undercover and in that process he gets drugged. Liz Heldens, one of our showrunners, had been dying to find a way to get me to dance on this show, and I was like "Listen: Will Trent is an awkward individual, he's not someone that's out here dancing." She was like, "Well, what if that's a hallucination?" I was like, "That's brilliant!" Anything can happen while he's tripping. I remember I was walking on set and one of our production assistants, Tim, had read the script and said, "What if Betty talks?" So I pitched that to Liz and she topped it and went, "Well, what if Betty's British?" You made your directorial debut in Season 3. How was that experience for you? I felt like a kid in a candy store. By Season 3, I really understood the character and what works with our show, where our strengths are. I just got to be me in certain scenes, because at the start of the [third] season Will has left the [Georgia Bureau of Investigation], he's got a beard and he's in a T-shirt, jeans and curly hair. It was also fun to direct new cast members. We introduced Gina Rodriguez, who played Marion Alba, and Antwayn Hopper, who played Rafel Wexford. Which was really fun. I'd be like: "No notes." [Laughs.] Will you be directing in Season 4? I will definitely be directing at least one episode next season. It makes the most sense for me to direct the premiere as I did this past season. I love that pressure of having to set the bar for a season. What can audiences expect for the upcoming season? We're about to begin these serious conversations. There were some pretty serious cliffhangers at the end of Season 3, where we find out Angie Polaski (Erika Christensen) is pregnant, and Will is definitely not the father, so that's gonna be something to explore. Amanda Wagner (Sonja Sohn), who is a maternal figure for Will, is in the hospital bed. We just discovered his dad, [Sheriff Caleb Roussard], which we don't know too much about, so I'd want to know more about the character and what happened with the mom. There's just so many questions that we will get to explore — I mean, is there new love in Will's life? Get our Latinx Files newsletter for stories that capture the complexity of our communities. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Julianne Nicholson Was ‘Paradise' Creator Dan Fogelman's Only Choice for His ‘Complicated' Villain
On June 5, the IndieWire Honors Spring 2025 ceremony will celebrate the creators and stars responsible for some of the most impressive and engaging work of this TV season. Curated and selected by IndieWire's editorial team, IndieWire Honors is a celebration of the creators, artisans, and performers behind television well worth toasting. We're showcasing their work with new interviews leading up to the Los Angeles event. Ahead, 'Paradise' creator Dan Fogelman explains why Julianne Nicholson, this season's IndieWire Honors Performance Award winner, was so worth the wait (and the white lies) it took to get her 'transcendent' work in the series. More from IndieWire Natasha Lyonne: The Maverick Behind the Madness 'Stick' Review: Owen Wilson's Golf Comedy Takes Too Many Shortcuts Trying to Be 'Ted Lasso' It's summer of 2024. We are shooting Episode 2 of my new [Hulu] series, 'Paradise.' While a lot of my mental energy has been devoted to the pilot, I'm equally focused on the second episode… an episode that expands our world and tells the backstory of our complicated 'villain' — Samantha Redmond, AKA Sinatra. I have come to set today — a rarity for me. Because today Julianne Nicholson is doing her big therapy scene — a monologue where she processes the loss of a child and her failed attempts to move forward — and I want to see it live. There are some things you just need to see in person. Julianne begins her monologue. The directors — knowing what's about to happen before it happens — have chosen to start on her and shoot the scene in one shot. No editing. Just let her go. And, so, the scene begins. I am standing in the back room, watching on the rear monitors. Julianne launches in. It is transcendent. And to no one, or maybe everyone, I simply say, 'Oh, my God.' And with that, as I'm inclined to do in many of my screenplays, I FLASHBACK. It's a year earlier now. I've been an admirer of Julianne's from a distance for years, and I've been obsessed with the idea of her as Sinatra from go. We've Zoomed, connected, and agreed to take this journey together. I'm so excited. And then I get a phone call… there's been a hiccup. Julianne has been filming another project, a project that still has time left to go, and their dates conflict with ours. They conflict in a way that makes shooting with her impossible. 'Dan,' I'm told, 'You're going to have to move on and cast someone else.' A decade of running TV shows has taught me to roll with the punches. A location falls apart, you change the location. An actor can't get their head around a speech, you change the words. But having Julianne in my show — in this part — and then losing her? I can't roll with that. There's a multiple week overlap between projects. I would have to push our project multiple weeks to accommodate Julianne's schedule. At a very late date. It would cost the show, and the studio that employs me, a LOT of money. I worry I'll never be able to convince anyone to push, not for one actor in an ensemble, no matter how great they are. And so… I lie. I tell everyone I need more time to prep the show (which I kind of do), and that we are rushing into production before we were ready (also a partial truth). But the real truth: we could shoot now. Just not with Julianne. And I don't want to shoot without Julianne. BACK TO PRESENT Julianne only needs two takes at the monologue. We will wind up using her first take in the show. It is one of the most extraordinary single pieces of acting I've ever witnessed — a broken woman, a mother who has lost a child, grasping at anything she can hold on to as she tries to survive for her remaining child. It's so raw, and so real… one of those performances where the lines blur between reality and art. You can hear a pin drop on stage. Everyone knows they are witnessing 'special.' I have a five-year-old. We're entering the 'not good to lie' portion of his development. But the white lie I told that allowed Julianne to play Sinatra is one of those few lies I'll be proud of for the rest of my life. She's a woman at the very top of her craft, who is kind and generous to boot. Working with Julianne Nicholson is, indeed, Paradise. Best of IndieWire The Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in June, from 'Vertigo' and 'Rear Window' to 'Emily the Criminal' All 12 Wes Anderson Movies, Ranked, from 'Bottle Rocket' to 'The Phoenician Scheme' Nightmare Film Shoots: The 38 Most Grueling Films Ever Made, from 'Deliverance' to 'The Wages of Fear'
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
2025 French Open: How to watch quarterfinals matches, new channels, full schedule and more
If you buy something through a link in this article, we may earn commission. Pricing and availability are subject to change. The second grand slam of the year is ongoing at Roland-Garros this week. The 2025 French Open is already in the quarterfinals. The defending champions, Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek have both made it through so far — though notably neither player occupies the top-seeded spot in their respective singles tournaments. Jannik Sinner is the No. 1 seed in the men's tournament, Aryna Sabalenka is the No. 1 seed in the women's. American tennis star Coco Gauff is the No. 2 seed on the women's side. In the U.S., coverage of this year's tournament is airing on TNT and truTV, and every match is streaming live on HBO Max. Are you ready to watch the French Open? Here's how to follow all the action down on the clay courts at Roland-Garros. How to watch the 2025 French Open: Dates: May 25 - June 8 Advertisement Time: Play starts daily at 5 a.m. ET Location: Stade Roland-Garros TV channel: TNT, truTV Streaming: HBO Max When is the 2025 French Open? The 2025 French Open will take place between May 25 and June 8. Singles play begins May 25, with the men's final closing things out on June 8. French Open time difference: Thanks to the time difference between the U.S. and France, the tennis tournament at Roland-Garros will start daily play at 5 a.m. ET/3 a.m. PT. 2025 French Open channel: In a shift from last year, the 2025 Roland-Garros tennis tournament will air across TNT and truTV — with all matches streaming on Max (soon to be officially re-named HBO Max). How to watch the French Open without cable: Disney Best bundle with French Open coverage Max, Disney+ and Hulu bundle (ad-free) The Disney+, Hulu, Max bundle gets you exactly what it sounds like: access to Disney+, Hulu and Max. If you go ad-free ($29.99/month) you'll save up to 38% off compared to individually paying for all three services — and gain access to all French Open coverage. If you don't already have access to these platforms, this is a great option that really covers your bases, streaming-wise. You'll get access to three vast libraries, fully stocked with everything MCU, all those Disney princesses (new and old), Hulu's robust catalog of shows on-demand the day after they air, including the latest episodes of Abbott Elementary, Grey's Anatomy and more, and the most recent seasons of The Last of Us, The Pitt and White Lotus. $29.99/month at Disney How to watch the French Open with a VPN: If you want to catch every match of the French Open and don't currently subscribe to HBO Max or a live TV streaming service, in Australia a majority of the action is streaming free with ads on 9Now, and in Austria it's all streaming free with ads on ServusTV. Advertisement Don't live in either of those places? Don't worry, you can still stream like you do with the help of a VPN. A VPN (virtual private network) helps protect your data, can mask your IP address and is perhaps most popular for being especially useful in the age of streaming. Whether you're looking to watch Friends on Netflix (which left the U.S. version of the streamer back in 2019) or tune in to next F1 race without a cable package, a VPN can help you out. Looking to try a VPN for the first time? This guide breaks down the best VPN options for every kind of user. Stream French Open coverage ExpressVPN ExpressVPN offers 'internet without borders,' meaning you can tune into an Austrian or Australian livestream this month as opposed to paying for another streaming subscription. All you'll need to do is sign up for ExpressVPN, change your server location and then find free livestream coverage on 9Now or ServusTV. ExpressVPN's added protection, speed and range of location options make it an excellent choice for first-time VPN users looking to stretch their streaming abilities, plus, it's Engadget's top pick for the best streaming VPN. New users can save 61% when they sign up for ExpressVPN's 2-year subscription. Plus, the service offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, in case you're nervous about trying a VPN. From $4.99/month at ExpressVPN French Open order of play: Here's the full rundown of who is playing at the 2025 French Open today. See order of play 2025 French Open schedule: June 3: Quarterfinals singles play begins Advertisement June 4: Quarterfinals singles play continues June 5: Women's semifinals singles play June 6: Men's semifinals singles play June 7: Women's final June 8: Men's final French Open 2025 men's seeds: Jannik Sinner Carlos Alcaraz Alexander Zverev Taylor Fritz Jack Draper Novak Djokovic Casper Ruud Lorenzo Musetti Alex de Minaur Holger Rune Daniil Medvedev Tommy Paul Ben Shelton Arthur Fils Frances Tiafoe Grigor Dimitrov Andrey Rublev Francisco Cerúndolo Jakub Menšík Stefanos Tsitsipas Tomáš Macháč Ugo Humbert Sebastian Korda Karen Khachanov Alexei Popyrin Alejandro Davidovich Fokina Denis Shapovalov Brandon Nakashima Félix Auger-Aliassime Hubert Hurkacz Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard Alex Michelsen French Open 2025 women's seeds: Aryna Sabalenka Coco Gauff Jessica Pegula Jasmine Paolini Iga Świątek Mirra Andreeva Madison Keys Zheng Qinwen Emma Navarro Paula Badosa Diana Shnaider Elena Rybakina Elina Svitolina Karolína Muchová Barbora Krejčíková Amanda Anisimova Daria Kasatkina Donna Vekić Liudmila Samsonova Ekaterina Alexandrova Jeļena Ostapenko Clara Tauson Beatriz Haddad Maia Elise Mertens Magdalena Fręch Marta Kostyuk Leylah Fernandez Peyton Stearns Linda Nosková Anna Kalinskaya Sofia Kenin Yulia Putintseva More ways to watch the 2025 French Open: