Clay Aiken is opening up about a tense moment that he had with Kelly Ripa 20 years ago. Apparently, it's stayed on his mind all of these years later.
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Speaking on the Hollywood Raw podcast, Aiken reflected on co-hosting with Ripa in 2006. During the gig, Aiken infamously put his hand on her mouth when Ripa refused to let him get a word in.
"Is that a no-no?" Aiken asked at the time.
"Oh, that's a no, no, no," Ripa responded. "I don't know where that hand's been, honey."
During the next episode, Ripa called out Aiken for being hostile.
Clay Aiken Reflects on Exchange
"There was a lack of respect, and when you're a certain person, you're in the public eye, you have to be respectful of other people. And I don't think that he was respectful in any way," she said at the time. "If that upsets his fans, I'm sorry to hear that, but you don't put your hands over somebody's face and mouth when they're conducting an interview, even if it's for a laugh. And that's all I'm gonna say."
Now, Aiken is opening up about the moment. He called it "probably the most catastrophic week of my life, to be honest."
"I'm on the show because I wanted to show them I could handle this myself; I could host something and I wasn't getting to talk," Aiken explained. "Like, there were cue cards. They had my name on them. So I tried to be funny, and I did what I did, which was incredibly innocent. And then it got a little cold in the room."
Aiken revealed that the incident led to him being outed as gay on The View.
"I was not out at the time. I was to Rosie, I was out to people who I knew. But I wasn't publicly out about it," Aiken said. "I was not out to my grandparents and the people in my family. And not only does Rosie call it a homophobic remark — which I think she accidentally said, and then she tried to walk it back a little bit — but then Kelly calls in live to The View that day and they get in an argument over it. Not only did she out me, but they had a big argument about whether I was gay and who talked about me being gay."
Aiken wouldn't publicly discuss his sexuality for two more years.
