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