Claim to Fame season 3 champion Adam Christoferson finds his celebrity relative, his uncle Michael Bolton, a bit intimidating.
“I haven’t told anybody this, but I’m starstruck by my own uncle,” Adam exclusively told Us Weekly after he won the $100,000 prize during the Wednesday, August 28, finale. “Like, we go golfing and I’m insecure about how to talk to him. He’ll be like, ‘Oh, I was golfing with Michael Jordan,’ … and I’m like, ‘Uhhhhh.’ It’s just always been like that.”
Adam noted that he’s been in awe of Bolton, 71, since he was young.
“As a kid, I used to see him up on stage and it was mesmerizing. It was kind of like God, honestly. I was just like, ‘This must be it,’” he recalled. “And then I realized in my adulthood that he isn’t the thing, it’s actually music that is the thing for me.”
Adam is a musician himself and founded a nonprofit organization called Musical Intervention that provides a safe environment for people to express themselves musically, especially those struggling with addiction and mental health challenges.
“So many people in society are often overlooked and don’t have a place where they can be encouraged by other people, and where people can actually at least attempt to make their life better. And music is just a really great tool for that,” Adam explained from the organization’s studio in New Haven, Connecticut. “[Musical Intervention is] an outgrowth of most of the work that I do in inpatient psychiatric hospitals and drug rehabilitation programs. This space in particular is an amazing melting pot of all walks of life coming together all around music.”
Adam’s desire to foster community and connect with people was one of the reasons he went on Claim to Fame.
“I wanted to connect with people who had similar experiences to me of being related to a celebrity,” he said. “Like, ‘Tell me the worst stuff you got going on and I’ll bleed a little bit for you.’ … That was my agenda going in. … Some people are more closely related to their relatives and other ones are a little more distant. [It’s] an interesting experience how your life is affected by having a celebrity [relative], because people do look and treat you differently.”
While Adam acknowledges that some people have complicated relationships with their celebrity relatives, he said that Bolton has “just always been proud” of him.
“He said, ‘You’re always a star.’ It’s an interesting time in his life because obviously he’s laid up after getting a surgery,” Adam said of the singer, who announced in January that he was recovering from emergency surgery following a brain tumor diagnosis. “During his rehabilitation that he is in now, he has some time to watch TV. … I’m just really glad that he could see me through that lens [on the show].”
Adam became the Claim to Fame season 3 champion after winning the final competition and successfully identifying his competitors Mackenzie Adkins and Hud Mellencamp’s celebrity relatives as Trace Adkins and John Mellencamp, respectively. Despite butting heads with some of his castmates on the show, Adam told Us they’re all in a group chat now.
“Danny [whose real name is Nael Zayas] has me laughing every single day. Naomi [Burns] and I talk on a regular basis,” he said.
Although Adam admitted it was “a little challenging to stomach watching” how some of his castmates felt about him during the competition, any onscreen drama is forgiven now.
“We all agreed that things were going to be said and done during the game. This isn’t real life,” he said. “After the show is over, let’s see what’s up. And the text chain is just hysterical.”
Claim to Fame is now streaming on Hulu
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