PHOTO PROVIDED Christina “Penny” Samar of South Williamsport at Madison Square Garden ahead her competing on “American Idol.”

After battling her way to the Top 24 on American Idol, South Williamsport native, Christina “Penny” Samar’s time on the show came to close during Sunday’s Easter special, but as she revealed, her experience during the competition was nothing but positive, and far from the end of the line for her budding career.

“My experience on the show was really awesome,” Samar said.

“You’re just put a bunch of artists in a pressure cooker, in a sense, and you’re told to compete with each other, but what I found was the most valuable thing was that everybody who was my competition turned into my friend at the end of the day,” she said.

“So the biggest thing I learned from the whole experience is to take what you can from the experience, and try to bring it with you wherever you go, because you get to work with vocal coaches and industry professionals that you wouldn’t have access to otherwise,” Samar said.

For Samar, the unexpected friendships she made on the show were equally valuable.

“Once you get to top 24, you’re just placed with people that you probably didn’t interact with. I met a lot of people that I didn’t even know were even in the competition until we were all put in the same space, because me, personally, I would gravitate towards people who are almost the exact same as me during Hollywood week, and then later on, I got to be really close to people that I wouldn’t expect to get close with,” Samar said.

One of those special friendships includes the bond that formed between Samar and her “Snow Angel sister,” Grayson Torrence.

Both women performed “Snow Angel” by Reneé Rapp during the Idol Arena round, though neither performance was aired.

“I think it would have been easy to pit each other against each other, because of the stress of the competition and it’s reality TV, but we just became friends after that, and we just had a very supportive dynamic,” she said.

The two would then team up to perform Billie Eilish’s “WILDFLOWER” during the head-to-head round.

During that round the pairs were forced to pick a song off a board and learn it, basically overnight, a task that Samar’s previous experience at West Chester University was instrumental in helping accomplish.

“With Under A Rest, I arranged the two sets that made it the furthest in the competition for the history of U.A.R., which was really awesome,” she said, noting that song selection was paramount.

“When we picked “WILDFLOWER,” I pulled the music and I put it on my laptop, and I cut it up on Logic and basically sang my part, and I sang Grayson’s part and recorded it, and I was like, ‘hey, we should try it like this, and then we did it, and it worked,” she explained.

Judge Lionel Richie dubbed it, “a perfect performance,” which Samar said was validating for the pair.

“I think Grayson and I both felt like underdogs. We got cut after the top 24, but I think we were never top picks throughout the whole show, so I think having that happen was really cool, because I think it solidified that we can do it,” she said.

For Samar, the off-screen camaraderie were among her favorite moments of the competition.

These included bonding with Zaylie Windsor over their respective performances of Billie Eillish’s “happier than ever,” seeing the Minecraft movie with Thunderstorm Artis and meeting season 14 runner-up Clark Beckham, as well as hanging out at the hotel with her fellow competitors.

But, by far the thing she will miss most is the outfits afforded to her.

“I love the wardrobe crew. When I got eliminated, that was actually one of the things I was most sad about because the wardrobe lady was like, ‘your next outfit was so good,'” Samar said.

A segment recorded, but unaired that Samar wishes could have been featured was her performance of “The Impossible Dream (The Quest),” which originated in the 1965 Broadway musical Man of La Mancha. Her performance would’ve been dedicated to her grandmother, she said.

“When I was a senior in high school, I sang that song at my choir concert, and she was in the audience for that, but prior to that, she always would say to me, she wanted to see me in that musical,” she explained.

Though she never appeared in the show, Samar and her grandmother attended one of its performances together.

“That was super special, because that song was one of her favorites, and it would have been cool to have that full circle moment,” she said.

Samar has since shared a clip of her American Idol performance of the song to her social media accounts.

Since leaving the show, Samar has been busy plotting her next moves, including releasing her latest single, “put yourself out there,” and announcing a project with Torrence.

An Instagram for the duo, @pgtheduo, appeared recently, accompanied by a clip of the pair performing their first original piece.

“She lives in Virginia, which is the only downside, so we need to figure out a long distance way to make it happen,” Samar said.

“But it’s one of those things where our duo is so good that it would be a shame if we didn’t at least try to make something,” she said.

In the meantime, Samar is focusing on her solo music, which she said is headed in a new direction.

“What I’ve been drawn to making recently is more of a Frank Ocean, Mac Miller soundscape, whereas before I was kind of in that girl pop realm, but I think more of that vibe is what I want to try and we’ll see how it goes,” she said, adding that she plans to self-produce her upcoming projects.

Recently relocating to Los Angeles also opens up the possibility of future collaborations, Samar said.

“The sky’s the limit. We will see what happens,” she said.