Britney Spears’ Former Duet Parter Don Philip Says He Was ‘Set Up’ on ‘X Factor’

Britney Spears was surprised to see her former duet partner Don Philip on the 'X Factor' stage, but after being voted from the audition round, the 32-year-old now says he was "set up."

While audiences heard bits of Philip's story, there apparently was a lot they didn't see. The singer, who collaborated with Spears on 'I Will Still Love You' from her debut album '… Baby One More Time,' was shown crying on stage before he even sang for the judges. This, he tells Access Hollywood, was because the panel "bullied" him into revealing that he's gay.

“Backstage, I’d talked to the producers about what was my secret was. And I mentioned that my secret was I was gay, but I really didn’t want to talk about it on the show," he claimed. "So, minutes later when I got on stage, L.A. Reid said, ‘What’s the secret? What’s the secret?’ over and over again. And I had to say it. I just felt like they were going to say it so I felt like I needed to say it first. And, I was just so emotionally distraught, I couldn’t pull it together to actually sing."

FOX did not air what Philip claims happened. He was unanimously voted off by the panel, including Spears, who said his voice wasn't “up to the bar of the standards of ‘The X Factor.'”

"It makes it kind of worse," he told the New York Post of not making it through to the next round. “My mother has still not spoken to me. It is like I went through all this [coming out] for nothing. Everyone knows I am gay now.”