Clay Aiken was the runner up in the second season of American Idol, back in the days when we thought George W. Bush was the nadir of the American presidency. How innocent we were. A couple years after his stint on Idol, Clay had a baby with his best friend, and used the birth announcement of his son to come out on the cover of People Mag. His performing career kind of fizzled out after that, and since then he’s had flashes of notoriety for running an unsuccessful North Carolina congressional campaign, victim blaming women celebs whose phones were hacked, and criticizing Duchess Meghan (but not so much Harry) for talking to Oprah about racism she experienced from the British press. I’m not here to defend Clay Aiken, but he did have an interview recently that I think is worth discussing. Clay says that the ticket sales for Spamalot, the Broadway show he was in at the time, plummeted after his 2008 coming out cover. Speaking again with People Mag, Clay talked about losing about “50 percent” of his fan base back then:
When Clay Aiken came out to the world in 2008, the public didn’t react how they likely would today.
Shortly after the birth of his son, Parker, in August 2008, the American Idol alum came out as gay on the cover of PEOPLE. At the time, Aiken said he wanted to follow through with a promise he made to himself as a new dad.
“It was the first decision I made as a father,” Aiken, then 29, said at the time. “I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things. I wasn’t raised that way, and I’m not going to raise a child to do that.
Now 46, Aiken is reflecting on that moment with PEOPLE and says so much of his public persona revolved around the speculation about his sexuality. Though he’s glad he was able to clear that up — it came with a price.
“Back then it was a big deal,” says Aiken, who recently marked his return to music with Christmas Bells Are Ringing.
At the time, Aiken was starring on Broadway’s Spamalot, and he noticed a drastic change in ticket sales after he came out.
“The first four months that I was in, the show was selling out, standing room only. You can actually look at the ticket sales the week after that cover came out,” he says. “It went from selling very well to the week after the cover came out, the ticket sales dropped. Spamalot ended up closing a few months after that.”
“We are in a very different time,” he continues. “I lost maybe 50 percent of the fan base.”
Still, Aiken has no regrets, and he’s “thrilled” to know “that’s not the world we live in” anymore.
“A lot of people who come out now end up having boosts in popularity because of it… That’s mind-blowing to me because it’s the opposite of what happened when I came out,” he says. “But it means that there’s progress and it means that as a country, we’re headed in the right direction.”
Yesterday Rosie covered a similar story from Lance Bass, about how he lost a CW pilot in 2006 after his coming out. I think it’s interesting that we’re hearing these accounts back to back. Their two takes strike me as more complicated than simply, “Look how far we’ve come!” Yes, there have definitely been huge strides made in 20 years in how Hollywood treats queer celebs. It’s not perfect, by any means, but it is better. Yet, and maybe I’m projecting here, I also feel like there’s a foreboding tone. Or at least a lingering question mark in the subtext, wondering just how far we’re about to regress with the government we’re getting next year.
My other main thought in considering these two stories of mid-2000s homophobia in the entertainment industry is: I’m not surprised at all that Lance lost a CW show. As despicable as it is, that totally checks out with my sense of TV and film execs back then. But to hear that happened on Broadway, too?! That shook me. Was this just the impact of tourists not buying tickets? Because the Broadway community is out, proud, and has always been more open than their silver screen counterparts. We’ve lost so much this year, don’t take away my faith in Broadway being a gay haven, as well!
Photos credit: Faye’s Vision/Cover Images, Getty and via social media
I think they are two different situations. Lance Bass was to be in a TV show playing a straight romantic handsome guy. CW said no, which was wrong. Clay was on Broadway and he’s talking about ticket sales. Ticket sales went down. That’s the general public, but ultimately a Broadway show isn’t keeping him on if he isn’t bringing in the crowds. I also think Clay may be projecting a bit much. Was there anyone who really didn’t know he was gay?
A lot of people just sort of assume that everyone is heterosexual until they’re told directly otherwise.
I remember Adam Lambert – I don’t think he ever actually came out but at some point it was made very clear that he was gay – and his response was like “I’ve been wearing eyeliner since day one on American Idol, did you think I was straight?” I’m getting the exact quote wrong but it was something where he was like “yeah……isn’t it obvious?”
I remember a Kathy Griffin standup special where she recounted going to a Clay Aiken concert and she said women were losing their minds over him. So it seems he did have a fan base of straight women who thought they had a shot with him.
My 2 sisters and my mom went to a Clay Aiken concert after American Idol. They were all acting like teenagers. My older sister was like in her 50’s at the time.
When he was on American idol, my sister had a huge crush on him. I kept saying you know he’s gay right? And she would get so mad at me. She’s also evangelical Christian so the idea of him being gay was not okay. I look back and feel bad for insisting he was gay bc now I just wouldn’t say that. Unless someone chooses to share something about themselves it feels gross and invasive to speculate. Unfortunately back then I didn’t even think about it that way.
Regarding Clay Aiken. The speculation about his sexuality was understandable because he is gay and his coming out surprised no one. However, he’s not entirely honest about Spamalot. He was in the show at the beginning of 2008 for four months. He rejoined the show in September for another four months up until its planned closing. He’s talking about two different appearances. Spamalot had already begun to fade by the time he came out and it’s rather egotistical to think he was the cause.
I actually watched his season of American idol and it was super obvious he was gay. It would be like pretending Liberace was straight.
Maybe some elderly people might not have picked up on it but anyone somewhat in touch with culture of any sort should have known.
Maybe some religious bigots turned a blind eye kind of like the Lindsay Graham situation.
Broadway itself is out and proud, but my guess is that when shows are selling out consistently, its not due to diehard Broadway fans. Hamilton sold out for years because it was a cultural phenomenon and people came from all over the country (all over the world) to see it on Broadway, even casual fans or people who maybe had never seen a broadway show before. They still do (Hamilton has come to my city twice and we’ve seen it there once but also made the trip to Broadway to see it twice, including once with our children.) Celebs in Broadway shows help them to sell out and again its not just to diehard Broadway fans, its casual tourists, its people who just want to “see a Broadway show,” etc.
So I can absolutely see how coming out back then hurt ticket sales. There are so many shows to choose from and if you’re seeing Spamalot to see Clay Aiken and now there is “something big” that you don’t like about Clay Aiken, that’s going to turn you towards another show.
This is one of the reasons why I think Jonathan Bailey is having such an impact. He’s openly gay, but he’s getting these leading roles where he’s the love interest of the FMC and that is not something that we would have seen happen in 2006. It feels like people are better able to separate the actor from the person and that’s a huge step forward IMO. I remember an interview with him when bridgerton first came out about how his agent told him not to tell anyone that he was gay or that he was an alcoholic (which apparently he is?) and he was very open about both and his career has soared anyway. But now we can see where that advice came from.
So now an actor coming out as gay is no longer “something big” or something that turns most people off from them. There is still a group that is homophobic of course, and there are still people that don’t want to see a gay person playing a heterosexual romantic lead. But I think the numbers for the latter are dwindling. Hopefully the trend continues and we are just able to see an artist as an artist and let their personal lives be their personal lives without anyone having to hide who they are.
Maybe it helped that the role that made Bailey most known had a fan base of women, and many romance novels fans where readership for bi romances or same sex romances has grown over the years. It is far more mainstream to see that now than years before.
I thought clay aiken was great until he put his hand on kelly’s mouth on her morning show. That’s when it changed for me, was that before or after his broadway show?
And then she got flack for saying “I just don’t know where that hand has been” like it was homophobic. No, she was shocked and grossed out that a man was putting his HAND ON HER MOUTH.
It’s odd that he lost fans, because I wasn’t aware that deaf, mute and blind people enjoyed singers to that extent.
WHO didn’t know that he was gay?
It’s appalling that in these modern times there are still people who think that they get to judge who other people love? To all the you’ll-burn-in-hell people, my reply is “You worry about your final destination, and let me worry about mine.”
It’s ridiculous for him to say he lost fans due to coming out. It was an open fact years before then, the National Enquirer even did an expose on one of his lovers, IIRC with webcam screenshots from his online chats with Clay, and the lover also went on Howard Stern with an extremely graphic interview about Clay.