Clay Aiken says he was publicly outed during a television argument he wasn’t even awake to watch. Rosie O’Donnell was defending him on The View, nearly two years before he would come out himself.
The American Idol runner-up was asked about O’Donnell during his September 17 visit to Page Six Radio. Host Evan Real described her as having defended him. “You say defended, I say outed,” Aiken replied.
Ripa had objected to Aiken’s behavior while he was filling in for Regis Philbin on Live With Regis and Kelly. O’Donnell called one of her remarks “homophobic,” and Ripa called into The View to argue her case.
“I died inside a lot that week,” Aiken said. He was in Los Angeles when the November 21, 2006 broadcast aired in New York, and learned about it when a friend came into his bedroom.
Jaymes Foster Woke Him With the News
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He recalled Jaymes Foster waking him and telling him, “You need to wake up because Rosie just outed you on The View.” Foster later became the mother of his son, Parker.
“I woke up. I was freaked out,” Aiken said. He believes O’Donnell was caught off guard when Ripa called into the show to challenge her, and that she chose her words in the heat of their argument.
“I don’t have any ill feelings against Rosie,” Aiken said. “She did mean well.”
Kelly Ripa Called In to Challenge O’Donnell
Four days earlier, Aiken had filled in for Regis Philbin on Live. Ripa was interviewing Dancing With the Stars winners Emmitt Smith and Cheryl Burke when Aiken, trying to get a question in, put his hand over her mouth.
“I don’t know where that hand’s been, honey,” Ripa told him. When Philbin returned on November 20, she complained to him about Aiken’s conduct. O’Donnell took up the subject the next morning, saying Ripa would have responded differently to a straight male celebrity.
On the broadcast, Ripa explained that Aiken had been shaking hands with audience members before putting his hand over her mouth. “I have three kids,” she said, adding that it was cold and flu season. She considered the gesture disrespectful and unprofessional, and called O’Donnell’s accusation “outrageous.”
O’Donnell answered that she had four children herself and understood the concern about germs. As a gay person, though, she had taken Ripa’s remark as homophobic: “That’s how it came off to me.”
Tori Spelling Helped Him Make the Controversy Into a Joke
Aiken was scheduled to appear with Tori Spelling at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles on the same day O’Donnell and Ripa argued on The View. They were introducing John Mayer’s performance, and Spelling suggested working a joke about the dispute into their presentation.
As Aiken listed Mayer’s accomplishments, Spelling put her hand over his mouth. “And I’ll tell you where that hand’s been later,” she said, as recounted by Entertainment Weekly.
He called Spelling “gracious” when telling the radio hosts how they worked out the bit. “We kind of took control over it,” he said.
Coming Out on the Cover of PEOPLE
O’Donnell knew Aiken was gay in 2006, but his grandparents and some other relatives did not. He described that predicament in a June interview on Hollywood Raw, covered by Page Six, saying he had come out to people he knew without making a public announcement.
That announcement came in September 2008, with Parker in his arms on the cover of PEOPLE. His son had been born the previous month, and Aiken said becoming a father had persuaded him to stop keeping his sexuality private. “I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things,” he said.
He expected some fans to struggle with both his sexuality and his having a child outside marriage. “I don’t want them to leave hating me,” he told the magazine.
In 2024, Aiken recalled playing to full houses during his first four months in Broadway’s Spamalot, then seeing ticket sales fall after the cover appeared. “I lost maybe 50 percent of the fan base,” he said.