I just saw on TMZ that Sanjaya (or someone who looks exactly like him and sounds exactly like him) sent a video to the gossip rag TMZ...stating that he is NOT a 17 year old named Sanjaya Malakar but actually a 25 year old named Bill Vendall. He also said is an art student at Rhode Island School of Design and the whole Sanjaya think was an art project...a thesis to see how far he could go, and how much he could dupe the American public.

I'm speechless...any out there think this could be true?????

Didn't hear it, but it would also have had to involve his parents and sister. If I remember right they invertiewed the parents in the audition show, and his sister also made it through to Hollywood but was eventually eliminated.

Anything is possible but I don't think it's true. They do a pretty extensive background check. I did think he did a good job though on the finale. He sounded better than in past shows. I also noticed that he seemed pretty full of himself. I think all the attention has gone to his hair... errr... I mean his head! LOL

Okay, let's be real. Does Sanjaya look like a Bill anybody? You can look at him and his whole family and tell that he is not american. That is a beautiful family and I refuse to believe such nonsense. Rumors are always raging about the AI contestants. I don't pay attention to that stuff.

Hummmm... what does an "American" look like???

I would agree with leanne about the background check; it's probably not true. Sounds like an urban legend, to me.

In other words, Sanjaya looks foreign and so does his family. In any case, it's a hoax. Not even worth talking about.

Sanjaya looks American to me...

The video is on youtube. It's Sanjaya alright, claiming to be a RISD student named Bill Vendall. He has apparently confessed that he made up the hoax. This untalented kid is getting on my nerves.

Well I googled the whole issue ... why I don't know, but it seems there is another clip where Sanaya explains that Will Farrell put him up to making the RISD tape. He finishes it up by saying Simon is really a 75 yo Asian woman. lol

I dunno; I think Sanjaya is kind of funny, but I have always appreciated iconoclasm.

As far as who looks "American" -- yipes! Look around, we are lucky enough to live in a diverse land where our families all arrived as immigrants, except of course for the Indians, who themselves were also immigrants, just thousands of years earlier.