What ultimately helped their friendship is that all of the contestants lived in a house together while competing. "We were the only season to all live in a house together. We were one of the only seasons to go on tour together afterwards," Aiken explained. "They certainly did tours for a few other seasons, but not as extensively as our season was. We just stayed in touch because of that. We all went into a show that — in a different time."
Still, they don't understand how future contestants are so distant from one another.
"How could you possibly go through that experience and not stay in touch with everybody who was involved?" Aiken asked. "I realized it doesn't happen like that on other seasons. We went to the Fox finale of the show years ago, and we both sat there with Kimberley Locke, the three of us hanging out from our season, and were just sort of baffled that none of the other finalists that had been on the same season were hanging out together."
