One day, Aaron Carter’s son, Prince, might want to watch Fallen Idols: Nick and Aaron Carter. The filmmakers kept that in mind as they made the new four-part docuseries about the late pop star and his Backstreet Boy brother, Nick Carter.
Executive producer Michael Hirschorn and showrunner Elissa Halperin hope the series will show Prince the true story of who his father Aaron Carter was before he died in 2022 at the age of 34. So they decided to make it as truthful and respectful to Aaron Carter’s legacy as they could.
“We wanted to make sure that there were people speaking in the piece who were sympathetic to Aaron and understood him. At the same time, as documentarians, you are always trying to get at the truth, and I think the way we justify what we do as documentarians is that the truth tends to be a good thing,” Hirschorn told MovieMaker.
“When his son reaches an appropriate age, he might be able to understand who he is and who his father is in a more holistic way.”
Carter’s son Prince was born in November 2021, just a year before his father died. His cause of death was ruled an accidental drowning in his bathtub after huffing difluoroethane and taking alprazolam, the generic version of Xanax, according to the Los Angeles County coroner.
Prince’s mother, Carter’s former fiancée Melanie Martin, is also featured in the docuseries. Fallen Idols premiered on May 27 on Investigation Discovery and Max, chronicling the rise and fall of the two famous Carter brothers.
The first two episodes focus specifically on Nick Carter’s rise to fame and the sexual assault allegations leveled against him by three women: Melissa Schuman, Ashley Repp, and Shay Ruth, all of whom speak in Fallen Idols and have filed civil suits against the Backstreet Boy. Nick Carter’s reps did not respond to MovieMaker‘s request for comment Wednesday, and he declined to speak in the docuseries, although he has denied all of the sexual assault allegations.
The third and fourth episodes dive more into Aaron’s story, including his public show of support of the women who accused his brother of assault. The “I Want Candy” and “Aaron’s Party” singer rose to fame in the late ’90s after Nick had already made a name for himself as one of the Backstreet Boys.
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Fallen Idols Follows Nick and Aaron Carter’s Rise to Fame
If Nick Carter was among the pop stars most beloved by elder Millennial women born in the early to mid-1980s, then Aaron Carter was for the younger Millennials, born between the late 1980s to the early 1990s. All that is to say, if you were between the ages of 8 and 18 in 1995, you were probably prescribed the Backstreet Boys — and if you were a girl old enough to be sentient in the year 2000, you most likely knew all about Aaron Carter.
The filmmakers said it was their goal to be as fair as possible to Nick Carter, featuring archival footage from his childhood and both positive and critical interviews with people close to him, to give a sense of the man behind the paparazzi photos.
“We made the case to everybody involved that our intent here was to tell a multifaceted, balanced story that was fair to everybody involved and wasn’t simply going to be a kind of one-sided narrative,” Hirschorn said.
“If we did our job right, it builds some empathy towards Nick and allows you to understand where he came from, because I think from at least my point of view, it’s not interesting to look at somebody like Nick as a two-dimensional person,” he added.
“I think it’s much more interesting to understand why he made the decisions that he made, why he acted the way he did, and I think you come away from from the third episode with a fair amount of sympathy for him in relation to his brother in particular and an understanding of who these people are.”
Rather than make a spectacle of Aaron, the younger Carter brother, Halperin says she hopes the series will present a complex and far-reaching portrait of his ups and downs. The docuseries addresses his much-covered battle with addiction and the rampant harassment he faced from internet trolls right up until his death in 2022.
“Aaron was someone who was very public about his struggles,” Halperin said. “There’s an opportunity to, by sharing, or continuing to share — because he shared a lot about his experiences and his struggles with the public before he died, even after Prince was born — help people who might be struggling with the same thing.”
All four episodes of Fallen Idols are now streaming on Max.
Main Image: LOS ANGELES – JULY 11: Aaron Carter and Nick Carter at “An All Star Night At The Mansion” charity event at Playboy Mansion on July 11, 2006 in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, CA. Courtesy of Shutterstock.
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