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♪ somber music playing ♪
♪
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
AARON CARTER: Hey, everybody, how you doing?
Aaron Carter. What's up?
♪
I just wanna thank all of you guys that have been real with me.
I finally got to this point in my life where I can say,
"You know what?
"You're-you're-you're doing good, bro.
Like, you're doing good, Aaron."
And nobody can take that away from me.
MELANIE MARTIN: Aw.
♪
You can see how kind
and how warm and how sweet he was.
♪
You can just see it in his eyes and his smile.
- Say hi, little Prince.
[Melanie chuckles]
PRINCE LYRIC CARTER: Whoa. MELANIE: Wow.
Who's that, Princey?
- Mommy.
Daddy.
MELANIE: Okay, that's your daddy. PRINCE: Ooh.
♪
MELANIE [voice breaking]: Before Aaron, I didn't really have,
like, a purpose in life yet and I feel like he gave me a purpose.
♪
And then now he's not here to raise our son.
[Melanie sniffles, sighs]
♪
[inhales, sighs]
- Aaron Carter's life story in one sentence.
♪
DISPATCHER [over radio]: Attention, Lancaster units, code three.
Response is needed.
NEWSCASTER: Aaron Carter has died.
WHIT JOHNSON: Sudden death of Aaron Carter.
ELIZABETH VARGAS: What's it like to be 12 years old and have groupies?
[laughs]
TAYLOR HELGESON: He got the cards that were dealt.
- Stop!
JEFF COHEN: Show business is a beast.
- It's a shit show.
It'll swallow you up.
- It's almost like he never stood a chance.
- Once the addiction took over,
that was running the show.
CHRIS CONNELLY: The little prince of pop, just 34 years old.
AARON: We have to give up something to get something.
I gave up being a normal person
to see the world.
[crowd cheering]
♪
- Aaron Carter was like quintessentially 2000s.
- You know, not a lot of kids my age get to do this kinda stuff.
- He really encapsulated a lot about that era.
[cheering]
- The first time that I heard the name Aaron Carter,
I had already been in love with his brother
for a really long time.
- ♪ Everybody ♪
- Nick Carter is a member of the Backstreet Boys.
- ♪ Rock your body ♪
- What's up, MTV?
BRITTANY SPANOS: Nick was traveling the world.
This band was already blowing up across the seas
before they were coming back to the US.
- ♪ Backstreet's back, alright ♪
♪
♪ Hey, yeah ♪
♪ Well ♪
♪ Oh, my God, we're back again ♪
AJ: Nick's mom would come out on the road
and, you know, Aaron would come out to hang out
with his big brother.
NICK CARTER: It started to become
to where he wanted to be with me
and the only way that he could be with me
was to do what I was doing.
- ♪ Am I original? ♪
- ♪ Yeah ♪
AJ: Aaron and Nick were pretty inseparable.
NICK: Me and the boys, we brought him out on tour
over in Germany, Austria, Switzerland.
- I believe Aaron was about nine when he opened up for us...
[cheering]
...and when everything really started for him.
♪
- ♪ Kick it ♪
♪
BRITTANY: He performs with the Backstreet Boys
and he's able to perform a cover of the song Crush on You.
♪
- ♪ I got a crush on you ♪
- There's a lot of kids who have siblings that are in the business.
But he was genuinely really good.
♪
- He went out there and he just blew 'em all away.
- ♪ You found out ♪
♪ I've got a crush on you ♪
[cheering]
TAYLOR: Once they saw the reaction...
- Thank you, Berlin, I love you.
- ...they were quick to scoop him up.
♪
BRITTANY: Aaron is assigned to Jive Records,
which is the label that also a lot of the acts
were being signed to at the time as well.
♪
- Lou saw the potential and he-he ran with it.
- Lou Pearlman was a music manager
and a bit of a Svengali.
He started the Backstreet Boys, he started NSYNC.
He ended up starting O-Town,
and he was also Aaron Carter's manager.
- He did know how to pick 'em.
♪
INTERVIEWER: Were you kind of inspired by your brother
to get into the whole singing thing or--
- Oh, of course, you know,
Nick, Nick was always my, my big idol
and I've always wanted to be like him.
[indistinct chatter]
♪
- I met Aaron when he had just come from Germany.
They were now launching Aaron in the United States
and they wanted to be sure
that he was on the cover of the teen magazines
and had mass media coverage.
REPORTER 1: That kid is Aaron Carter.
REPORTER 2: Aaron, yeah, right there.
One more time like that.
- Aaron Carter, is he hot or what?
BRITTANY: His real breakthrough would be
at the height of-of it all, it'd be in 2000.
- ♪ People all around you got to ♪
- ♪ Come get it ♪ - ♪ Everyone together sing it loud ♪
- ♪ Come get it ♪
- Aaron's Party came out in 2000.
- ♪ Come get it ♪ - ♪ What? ♪
All the bangers on it, I Want Candy.
- ♪ I want candy ♪
[inaudible]
♪ I want candy ♪
♪
- My best friend's name was Tammy.
When we were little, we would write like, "I want Tammy."
- ♪ I want candy ♪ [tapping rhythmically]
Catchy as hell. - ♪ It's like boom ♪
- That's How I Beat Shaq.
- ♪ I put it in the hoop like slam ♪
SCAACHI KOUL: He's making bank playing with Shaquille O'Neal
despite the fact that he's four feet tall.
- ♪ Because that's how I beat Shaq ♪
♪
SCAACHI: It was a really successful record.
He sold millions of copies domestically.
He became an international hit because of that album.
NEWSCASTER: Phenomenon Aaron Carter.
BRITTANY: He's kind of like the turn-up king
for 13-year-olds at this moment.
- Now we can sort of look at Aaron Carter and we can look at that album,
we can look at how successful it was
and see the precursor
to a Justin Bieber or to Shawn Mendes.
- Whoo, here we go.
♪
AJ: Aaron's vibe and his sound
in some ways was very reminiscent of like young,
young, young, young like Michael.
- ♪ You gotta get up ♪
- The really high voice.
Kinda goofy awkwardness.
ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome Aaron Carter.
- You know, Michael Jackson was known as the king of pop.
- Hey, Michael.
Hey, it's Aaron.
PHIL LOBEL: And actually bestowed upon Aaron Carter
the title "the Little Prince of Pop."
And that term stuck.
♪
- What's it like to be 12 years old and have groupies?
[laughs]
- Well, they're not groupies, they're fans.
- They're fans?
PHIL: The tour bus would arrive at these venues
and the girls would be outside by the gates with signs,
"We love Aaron,"
and he'd get off the bus and take pictures with the girls
and he'd be signing records
and signing the posters from the teen magazines.
- He's really kind of becoming a part of the teen idol scene at this time.
- I very distinctly remember Aaron on Lizzie McGuire.
- Uh, okay, just hear me out.
Aaron Carter coming here
is the most exciting thing that's ever happened to us.
♪
- And then they kiss, which is also a really big deal.
♪
You get it on your VHS and you rewind to play it again.
BRITTANY: I mean, this is like one of the biggest shows
of this era on Disney Channel.
Hilary Duff's becoming like a team queen of this moment
and this becomes a huge turning point
in terms of kind of fame and charm factor.
[indistinct chatter]
[crowd cheering]
- It was the premiere of Hilary Duff's first big movie.
- I'm nervous, Fred!
- And I wanted to shoot the two of them together on the carpet.
So we stopped at a flower store
and picked up a big bouquet of flowers.
With the cameras shooting away,
he presents to Hilary this bouquet of flowers
right on the carpet.
And that was like the start of this media frenzy
that Aaron Carter was dating Hilary Duff.
HILARY DUFF: We're really good friends.
CHARLES GIBSON: Are you, are you, uh--
Are you an item?
♪
SCAACHI: It felt like kismet.
These are like the cutest, whitest, blondest people in the world
and finally they have met and fallen in love.
It was Justin and Britney light.
It was Justin Bieber and Selena light.
You know, we've seen these archetypes across generations.
And it's doomed.
- I just got a little bored. INTERVIEWER: Okay.
- So I went and I started getting to know Lindsay.
♪
Dating Lindsay. INTERVIEWER: Dating.
♪
SCAACHI: Lindsay Lohan is the kind of premier
like teen actress of this moment.
You have these twin flames to Aaron
and then obviously it turns into a love triangle.
- This was a,
an interesting kind of turning point in tabloid culture.
These are all teenagers that people became overly invested in,
everything about their lives.
- Felt like you either had to be like Team Lindsay
or team Hilary,
and it was ridiculous and this was all over Aaron.
These are kids.
[inaudible]
- He's a kid thinking this is what real life is like,
this is what it is,
I can have anything I want.
I can do anything I want.
I can get any girl I want.
I can get free clothes and things sent to me and blah, blah.
That's not reality.
♪
DR. TRAVIS STORK: In some ways I think
Aaron had to grow up too fast.
♪
But on the other hand,
did he ever develop
in the way a normal child might.
I can't even think about what my life would've been like
if I was his age
and all of a sudden I'm dealing
with something that is too big to handle.
♪
I'm an ER doctor who, believe it or not,
started on TV as The Bachelor season eight.
I remember thinking, "Boy, oh boy, anyone who goes through this,
if you don't have your shit together, you are screwed."
You tell me one childhood star
who made it out unscathed.
I can't think of one.
Unless they had an incredibly supportive system around them.
♪
SCAACHI: The Carter family lived in Florida
and there were a lot of kids.
BRITTANY: It was Nick, Bobbie Jean, then Leslie,
and then Aaron and Angel.
♪
- And I've known Aaron since he was...
[sighs]
...probably three or four, maybe?
The other siblings minus Nick
were a little more subdued.
Aaron was Nick,
and they were very much mirror images of each other.
- They grew up pretty poor.
- And we lived in-in a van in, uh,
Florida for like a little bit.
And really didn't have anything.
Mom and Dad were trying to, just trying to get started.
When Aaron was born,
things were starting to get a little better.
We had, like, a two-bedroom house,
but we still had five kids in one household
with two bedrooms.
It's just, you know, it's so many different,
you know, type of personalities.
♪
It's a crazy household to live in, I'll tell you that.
AARON: Yeah. [laughs]
♪
[cheering]
REPORTER: Alright, guys, why don't we start off with
what do the Teen Choice Awards mean to you guys?
- A lot of--
- A lot of-- I don't know. - Color.
- It's a lot of fun, lot of fun. - Color.
- You know, people just come here to just have fun.
And that's why I'm here, you know.
With him.
REPORTER: Have some good times? - Yeah.
SCAACHI: The perception was that Aaron
had a really fun, exciting, glamorous, expensive life.
And I don't think people understood
that the reality was really dark.
- Everything starts in the home.
If there's issues between Mom and Dad,
it's gonna have a huge effect on you.
- I mean, the parents were moving in the direction of a divorce.
It certainly was leading to more arguments
between Jane and Bob.
SCAACHI: I think Aaron always felt stuck
between two very bombastic grownups.
And he is this little kid who is trying to keep the peace.
- What was it like being in the middle of your parents' divorce?
- It was really, really tough because, you know,
sometimes I feel like it was, it was my fault.
You know, sometimes I feel like, you know,
was it me who caused it?
Was it me who-who did it?
♪
- Aaron's mom was managing his career, which is very common,
a lot of child stars, their-their moms end up taking over their accounts.
- This is from Aaron's winter party.
I just loved that coat we had made.
I had designed that coat for him.
PHIL: Jane Carter was more the business person
that I dealt with on a day-to-day basis.
I'm dealing with all things publicity.
- Crush On You. That was his very first single,
and that went gold in Germany, too.
SCAACHI: Over the course of their relationship,
Aaron accused his mom countless times
of not really being a mother,
but being a manager first.
- It was never about a mother-son relationship.
It was always about work.
Sometimes I would just stop and I would be like,
"Mom, why can't we just fight about, you know,
"me being a teenager and me growing up or, you know,
why can't we fight about those kinda things?"
♪
JOHN STOSSEL: The famous brothers are Nick and Aaron Carter.
They're huge pop stars and very rich now.
It's interesting that it was
when the money started rolling in that the trouble began.
SCAACHI: Within a couple of years of her managing him,
he accuses her of basically taking his money.
♪
- When we were on tour, every show we did,
we would probably make about,
I mean, like maybe $40,000, $50,000 a show.
And it was all gone.
- Do you think your mother stole money from you?
- I think she did.
I don't know if it was intentional or unintentional, unintentional,
but, I mean, I know that it was gone.
- After all these years of being Aaron's publicist,
suddenly they were two or three months behind.
You know, I-I reached out and that's when I kinda found out
that there was no more money.
♪
- My experience as a former child actor
very much informs my experience
as an entertainment lawyer now.
OPERATOR: Marker. PRODUCER: Thank you.
- Alright.
I played the role of Chunk in the film The Goonies.
- First you gotta do the truffle shuffle.
- Come on.
[yells unintelligibly] [laughter]
I weigh the same, uh, but I was shorter and I had more hair.
I had a lot more hair, uh, back then.
♪
Show business is a beast.
And I learned how it can go right and how it can go wrong.
And you need someone in your corner,
you need someone who has your best interest at heart.
♪
PHIL: The Jackie Coogan Laws
dictate that parents set aside
for their minor's income in a, in a trust fund.
♪
JEFF: Jackie Coogan was the first great child movie star.
And in the '20s and '30s,
he amassed earnings of four million dollars.
As an adult, he asked his mother and stepfather for his money.
And they said, it's gone.
[inaudible]
In California, the state legislature in 1939 passed the law
that eventually became known as the Coogan Act.
The law was amended in 1999.
The law was amended in 2003.
Its heart is in the right place,
but there are a number of deficiencies.
It's not nationwide.
You're only required to put 15% of the child's earnings in trust,
so that means 85% is fair game.
Additionally, if the law is breached,
you have to sue your parents.
Who wants to sue their parents?
♪
AJ: Let's just call a spade a spade.
The entertainment business is definitely not normal.
It's a shit show, man. It is.
It'll swallow you up.
♪
JANE CARTER: The drugs, the drinking,
the people that want a piece of you.
A normal family doesn't have all those pressures.
[crowd yells] [man whistles]
- 15, 16 years old, of course I experimented with things,
but I realized it was a mistake.
- You were quoted as saying you were worried
you were gonna wake up one morning
and hear that he had died of a drug overdose.
- I did. I did worry about that.
♪
AJ: I don't know when the downward spiral started.
Nobody really knows, except Aaron,
but I don't think anybody really was aware of the signs
early on to maybe try to nip it in the bud.
♪
SCAACHI: There is a real appetite for the come up
and the fall down of a child star.
♪
People started to enjoy watching him fail.
♪
- There was a major fall-off for the acts
that were still trying to make that same bubblegum pop sound
of the late '90s, early 2000s,
and Aaron was one of the-the victims of that.
AJ: Others may think differently, but how I perceived it
is that he was always trying to play catch-up,
and then started probably to feel
like he was living in his brother's shadow.
- Nick and Aaron were really competitive.
You saw it a lot on House of Carters.
- Come on in.
- Pickle!
SCAACHI: House of Carters premiered in 2006.
ANGEL: Where's the bathroom? Gotta go pee.
BRITTANY: Aaron's career had fallen off.
This was their way of recapturing the public interest.
- I got a pool and a balcony to jump from.
NICK: No, Aaron, don't, please.
AJ: I thought it was a bad idea for them to do the show.
It did not help Aaron's cause.
- I was with Mom and I didn't even get a chance to cry
about Mom and Dad's divorce.
- It's really not even an issue.
- Yes, it is an issue.
SCAACHI: House of Carters seem to be telling us the truth.
NICK: Anybody that wants to know the truth.
You wanna know why I don’t trust my brother?
Why he doesn't respect me?
BRITTANY: And I don't even think that the show
understood it was doing that.
- I think around then is really when
the friction really started to happen.
- Alright? Alright? - Don't spit on my face.
- You gonna respect me. - Don't spit in my face.
- You're gonna respect me.
- Stop it. - What are you doing?
NICK: You’re gonna respect my house.
AARON: Get out of my room.
What are you doing?
NICK: Now I'm gonna tell you [bleep]--
AJ: What started out as a, "I really admire my big brother..."
NICK: Let's go, baby, let's go.
AJ: ..."I wanna be like my big brother."
But then when you don't become your big brother,
how do you handle that?
♪
Aaron was the definition of bubblegum pop.
Maybe he thought, "Okay, I had this success.
It's gonna stay like this."
It doesn't just stay, you gotta keep working at it.
You gotta keep reinventing yourself.
You have to keep growing.
♪
- This season's comeback kid,
pop star Aaron Carter...
SCAACHI: By 2009, Aaron starts doing
what I think a lot of celebrities that go
from A-list to C, D-list start doing.
- ♪ Riding high ♪
BRITTANY: To go on Dancing With the Stars was a huge move
for a lot of artists
who were reviving their career in some capacity.
AARON: Being able to climb back up the ladder is so rewarding
because you gotta work for it and... I'm working for it.
- I think Aaron maybe expected,
okay, if I go on a national television show
and remind people, "Hey, I'm here,"
offers are gonna start piling up.
- But it just didn't really pay off the way that he had hoped.
- He starts engaging in pop culture in different avenues.
Like a super-long run with the Fantasticks off-Broadway.
He was really trying to find his footing again.
There's a version of the world
where Aaron Carter hosts like Access Hollywood,
that could have happened, um.
But I don't know, it didn't take.
♪
BRITTANY: There wasn't a million offers after that.
He wasn't getting people lining up to wanna work with him.
♪
AJ: Now that's messing with his ego.
Now that's messing with his pride.
You're gonna then go back inward
and the demons are gonna take over again.
♪
TAYLOR: Aaron hadn't released music in quite some time
and he didn't know what his sound was.
It was his chance to prove himself.
The beginning of 2015, I'd been out here about five years,
your typical struggling artist situation.
I ended up getting a couch in a buddy's house
and he was ranting about how he was friends with Aaron Carter.
Big flex, you know, Aaron Carter, like,
hey, I think I've heard of him, you know.
And the very next morning, it's like 7:00 in the morning.
I woke up to somebody knocking on the door
and I'm looking at Aaron Carter.
And he looks at me and he says, "Hey, you write music, right?"
I'm like, "Yeah."
And he's like, "Come in my car.
I got some beats I wanna play you."
Like, just like that.
And I'm like, "Uh, okay, let me put some clothes on real quick."
♪
We went, we sat in his car for, like, four hours.
In that session, we wrote the first song on the Love album.
♪
Mid-2015 is when we really started going deep.
♪ plays notes on piano ♪ [indistinct singing]
Working with Aaron on a project was...
[laughter]
...one of the most special experiences
uh, of my life to date.
Incredibly exhausting,
this guy, all he wanted to do was work.
♪ bright piano music playing ♪
AJ: He was a super, super talented kid,
and all the instruments that he played, self-taught.
♪ upbeat electronic music playing ♪
♪
That's a gift.
That is a huge gift.
TAYLOR: We'd stay, you know, for a month straight
from sun-up to sundown in his house,
just recording, recording, writing, recording, writing, recording.
♪
He was very meticulous about making sure
that every song was exactly the way that he wanted it to be.
It was absolutely relentless,
but we were able to find a new sound for Aaron.
♪
Sooner Or Later was the single off the album Love that we released.
- ♪ Sooner or later she'll be walking away ♪
♪ I got something to say to her ♪
TAYLOR: And it was very much Aaron's sound, you know.
The difference between Aaron's early work and the Love album,
those records weren't Aaron's records.
A five-year-old kid doesn't know who they are.
[indistinct chatter]
Especially when they're being directed by a team
of God knows how many people telling him,
do this, do this, do this every day.
REPORTER: Aaron, point at me, right here.
- He wasn't old enough to make that choice for himself.
You know, Aaron had a lot of resentment about growing up like that.
- ♪ I don't need this pressure ♪
♪ You're my greatest stressor ♪
♪ Panties on my bed ♪
TAYLOR: The Love album was his.
He chose to make it and he made it his way.
♪ Fool's Gold by Aaron Carter playing ♪
And that was him taking his power back.
- This is my best friend.
He co-wrote every single song on the Love album.
♪ upbeat electronic music playing ♪
♪
BRITTANY: It's a pretty good album, you know.
It's a very grown album from him...
♪
...but unfortunately it doesn't recapture
the type of kind of power that he had as a child.
At this point in his life,
he's back in the press and public consciousness
for really all the wrong reasons.
You know, he's beginning to act pretty radically on social media.
He gets a DUI.
NEWSCASTER: From promising child star to this mugshot.
INTERVIEWER: You know, when people see this mugshot,
they think, you know, this is a picture of-of a drug addict.
Are you a drug addict?
- No.
♪
SCAACHI: He appears really, really emaciated.
He does not look well.
He's really thin, he's really gaunt.
He has no color in his face.
He had shaved the side of his head
so he looked kind of alien-esque.
His tattoos were on his neck like snaking down his arms.
There was a clear shift in his physicality.
♪
He was coming from a place of agony.
Just, he was like a raw open wound all the time.
And it is not fun to engage in pop culture
made by a weeping sore.
♪
I think this sort of marks the beginning of Aaron
going back to the well of trauma in order to have a career,
'cause you see him doing it again and again.
And in 2017, Aaron appears on The Doctors.
- I need help. I'm scared.
DR. STORK: So I was never Aaron's doctor.
To be honest with you,
I looked at Aaron more like a little brother.
Because Aaron not only had issues with substance abuse,
he obviously had a lot of familial issues
and then on top of it, you know,
he was dealing with some true, uh, mental health issues.
It was pretty clear he needed some help ASAP.
- There's things going on with me.
There's rumors.
There's people that are body-shaming me.
DR. STORK: When Aaron was really going through the toughest times,
it was also when he's interacting with,
we call them internet trolls, right,
and he couldn't stop.
TAYLOR: I think one of the downfalls for Aaron
was that he fed into it a lot.
He really cared about what people thought about him
and I think you could argue he was raised
to care very much about what people thought about him.
He would engage with these people
and engaging with them only makes it worse.
- It's almost like he had an addiction
not only to substances, um, but to his fame as well.
Not an addiction to, oh, I must be famous,
but an addiction to, I must please my fans.
- Love you.
- I must make sure that they understand,
um, when I'm not sure anyone could ever understand Aaron except himself.
Aaron very openly submitted to a drug test
because he wanted to set the record straight.
Cocaine was negative, meth was negative,
marijuana was positive, benzodiazepines, Xanax for instance, positive.
It was also positive for opiates, hydrocodone.
What scares me about that drug panel... AARON: Yeah.
- ...is your sister perished from an overdose.
- Yeah.
♪
SCAACHI: I remember Leslie a lot.
A lot.
BRITTANY: Leslie's the middle child in the Carter family
and she had a really long struggle with addiction
and she passed away from an overdose at the age of 25.
♪
DR. STORK: What's your greatest fear? AARON: My greatest fear?
I don't even know how to answer that question.
Not being able to live... as long as I can.
♪
AJ: I was a functioning addict.
I've been in and out of the rooms since 2001.
So for 22 years,
I've been battling my own shit.
I almost lost my marriage. I almost lost my band.
Um...
I almost lost my life.
The last time I relapsed,
um, which would be 18 months ago,
you know, my youngest daughter was kind of the
nail in the coffin for me.
♪
She said I didn't smell like her dad.
That was enough.
That... that pretty much did it in for me.
And I have stayed sober since,
and I plan on staying sober, and it's a daily thing.
♪
2017, Aaron had reached out to me,
asked me for help, and I said,
"Look, if you get on a plane and you come out to LA,
I will make sure you get into treatment."
And he showed up.
I was shocked, but I was happy.
And he checked in to a treatment center in Malibu.
♪
A couple days later I talked to him,
and then he kind of went off the map
and I think it was maybe two weeks.
So I called my friends at the treatment center
and they said he checked himself out.
♪
- I have a truth that I'm going to reveal right now.
- When Aaron came back on in 2019,
maybe he wasn't as good
as at first glance he might have appeared to have been.
- The reason why I went to rehab is for huffing.
- That's basically breathing in compressed air
and it could be anything.
It provides this euphoria
and it doesn't show up on a drug screen,
so it's probably more common than people realize.
But it can cause sudden, sudden death,
uh, it can affect your heart,
it can obviously affect your brain.
♪
In my time talking to Aaron, it was never, you know,
"My best friend or my siblings."
He didn't have anyone.
I met his mom.
It's not as though this was some really
comfortable relationship
where they're leaning on each other to-to get better.
It was more so just equally self-destructive.
Please welcome Aaron's mom, Jane, to the show.
SCAACHI: On the 2019 appearance of The Doctors,
he brought his mother.
- I get up in the morning...
- Tell 'em the truth. - ...four, five o'clock.
And, uh, first thing I want to do is, is have a drink.
- They have such a strange back-and-forth dynamic
where he needed her so desperately
and he was constantly making room for her
in whatever way he could.
- Normally when a child has an addiction,
they can lean on their mother for help.
But what do you do
when they're both struggling?
♪
It's not like he had one person that he really counted on.
It was Aaron... and the world.
[birds chirping]
♪
MELANIE: I saw something cute on social media
where Aaron did a tour of his house
and he was showing his dogs and he was, like,
showing his barbecue and he was like,
"I need a woman that can cook with me
and have a family with."
So I just sent him a message and I said,
"Your pug is so cute, I wish I could cuddle with you guys."
And then he was like, "Well, you can."
And I'm like, "Okay."
♪
It was so cute and so innocent.
He was so innocent and so down-to-earth.
[indistinct chatter] OPERATOR: Marker.
MELANIE: My name is Melanie Martin
and I was engaged to Aaron Carter.
♪
I wasn't a boy band fan,
but I did think he was very attractive.
It wasn't like I was following him for a long time.
I just followed him that day and then messaged him
and then it was like right away.
I didn't think he was gonna respond, and he did.
And then, you know, we hit it off,
and I stayed at his place.
- And then I went back to my place and he said,
"I miss you already, come back and move in with me."
- Say hello, my love.
- Hi. [chuckles]
I mean, he was posting me on his page.
AARON: Say hello. - Hey, guys. [chuckles]
Saying this is my new wife right away.
You guys, what should our couple's name be?
- Maron.
- And he was like, "I wanna have kids with her and marry her"
and all this stuff. [laughs]
- Alright, guys, shh. Guess what?
I have a question for you. MELANIE: Oh, my gosh.
- Alright, stop, stop. MELANIE: Baby.
Hi, guys.
Ahh!
♪
[inaudible]
♪
AARON: Hi. MELANIE: Ooh, hi.
[kisses]
Whoo!
♪
- Melanie Martin and Aaron began dating around 2020.
♪
There were a lot of ups and downs, a lot of breakups and makeups.
- Aaron and Melanie's relationship was not a healthy dynamic.
He goes on YouTube and he says
that she has physically assaulted him.
- He would call the police department and then--
It doesn't make sense to me.
He's back with me a week later. [scoffs]
- She has also alleged that he was abusing her.
♪
MELANIE: It was always up and down.
♪
I couldn't live without him
and he said, "I couldn't live without you," you know.
♪
- And again, everything with Aaron goes back to-to tragedy.
It's a tragic relationship.
And I don't think that he had any framework
to have a healthy one.
♪
I think at some point, Aaron had accused
almost everybody in his family of abuse,
but there's also lots of allegations of abuse against Aaron.
Nick and Angel both ended up filing
a restraining order against Aaron.
♪
- Once the addiction took over that was running the show,
was telling Aaron what to say, what to think, what to do,
how to act, how to be.
Instead of being a little angry,
you're gonna go full-on postal.
Instead of being a little emotional,
you're gonna be a babbling brook.
- They made that tough choice to walk away,
you know, for the benefit of him.
To show him that you can't have both.
You can't have a fulfilling, loving family life
and be in your addiction.
They made that choice.
That's one of the hardest choices you can make.
♪
When he had Prince, something really changed with him.
MELANIE: Look how cute my little babies are.
You guys are little twinsies.
- Wanna say hi, little one?
Say hi, little Prince.
[Melanie chuckles]
Are you hungry again?
You're hungry?
Oh, is he hungry?
TAYLOR: Aaron, his whole life, wanted a family of his own
and I think that stems from just a tumultuous childhood.
AARON: Is that my baby boy? Uh-huh?
Are you looking at the cam? Hi.
Look at Daddy.
TAYLOR: So when he had Prince...
AARON: Daddy loves you.
TAYLOR: ...that was everything to him.
AARON: Hey, sweet boy.
[Aaron chuckles]
Oh. [chuckles]
♪
TAYLOR: Aaron called me, uh, in June.
He was very adamant about doing this tour.
Um, he felt like this is how he's gonna make money,
you know, he's got his kid, he's a new father, and he needs to work.
The best Aaron was a working Aaron.
He felt like he was in his safe place again
and he felt like he was finally getting back
into a purpose, right?
♪
KAILA METHVEN: It seemed like a new door or a new path had opened for him.
He even said it was like one of the best days in a long, long time
that he was happy to be on set again.
The legendary Aaron Carter.
Mwah! You look fabulous.
- And-and you look shiny and beautiful.
- Oh, thank you, sweetheart.
- The day that Aaron went on Kaila's talk show,
he was really focused.
- How's it going? - Oh, good, good.
And how are you? - I'm good, I'm good.
- He loves being on talk shows.
He likes to tell the truth and, you know, say what he feels.
- I went into rehab four times until I finally got it right.
- And you know what? Amen, you got it right.
- Thank you. Thank you.
KAILA: The moment when he said that, "I went to rehab four times,"
and that he was really trying to be his best person
is what really stood out to me
because I really believe that.
♪
NOGEN BECK: I didn't know what was gonna happen that day.
I was photographing for a pilot.
KAILA: I hired him to come on set
and just take headshots of everyone.
NOGEN: Celebrities, they want to appear aspirational,
whereas as soon as Aaron got in front of the lens,
I was just sensing something completely different.
♪
Aaron wanted to connect.
Aaron wanted to be genuine.
Aaron wanted to be accepted for who he was.
♪
It was two minutes.
There were probably 55 just show-stopping images.
It's a lot. That's a lot.
KAILA: He was living his life again
after four years of, you know,
trying to get himself into the right position.
- He and his friend approached me at the end
and asked me to, uh, photograph his album cover.
It looked to me like a person that was really eager to express himself anew.
♪
- I think he was putting on a face
and... I think he was in a lot of personal pain
and, um, very lost the last two years of his life.
♪
We were on that tour.
I said, "What is it like to be you?
What is it like to be famous for better or worse?"
♪
This was a point where the cyberbullying stuff
had gotten... quite outta hand.
And we had, if you can believe it,
a dedicated group who bought tickets
to every single show just to heckle Aaron.
They'd post from on their social media
and a hold up signs like, "I hate you."
We got off stage and he was visibly, like, hurt
and he calmly, he just looked at me and he said like,
"You remember what you asked me?" And I said, "Yeah."
And he said, "It feels like this, every day."
It was kinda like being in, like, your own little prison, you know.
A life of criticism, a life of never enough.
I-I think he hated it, you know,
and that's why he'd act the way he would.
♪
MELANIE: The end of '22,
his mental health was not all there.
Aaron and I did lose custody of Prince.
♪
I think that the real downfall was him losing custody
and not knowing what was gonna happen.
♪
Basically, Aaron had a manic episode.
We had a heated fight and it was, you know,
lingering on for a few days.
Thank you, Princey. [Prince coos]
♪
The uncertainty of, like, what was gonna happen,
and there was just too much going on.
Him trying to rebuild his career, our relationship,
he was thinking about family all the time.
I don't know, it was just a lot for any person to handle,
let alone somebody that says
they have mental health issues, you know.
♪
TAYLOR: He was trying to do everything in his power
that he could do,
fighting that addiction to get to a place
where he could retain custody of his kid.
♪
Unfortunately, his life and the way he was living
called into question his ability to raise that kid.
♪
CHRISTY CARLSON ROMANO: I never claimed to know Aaron that well.
♪
What I wanted to do though was get to know him well.
♪
A lot of people know me
from Disney Channel's golden era of programming,
which included Even Stevens
where I co-starred next to Shia LaBeouf.
- Oh, hi, Ren, uh, can I ask you something?
- You just did. Bye.
♪
I definitely had a pretty rough time acclimating
socially and emotionally
to life after Disney, I'd say.
MAN: Christy!
CHRISTY: What people didn't see, you know,
it's like I flirted with self-harm.
PHOTOGRAPHER 1: How about an over-the-shoulder?
PHOTOGRAPHER 2: Wow, you're looking good.
- Obviously alcohol was a coping mechanism for me.
♪
Now I have a podcast that's a mental health-focused podcast
that's grabbing a lot of headlines
because I've become sort of an advocate
for former child actors.
- The acting was almost like a home that wasn't broken.
- There were times that I was in fuckin' tabloids as a kid and stuff.
- There was so much upheaval in my life
that acting became that... that thing for me.
- Because I was like, cut the shit because I know how I feel
and I know that you must share some of the same experiences.
♪
When I saw Aaron online,
I felt like he wasn't displaying his best self.
And so there was a part of me that was trying to be
the big sister and help him.
♪
- Christy had reached out to do a interview with Aaron
and, you know, this was kind of during that period
where Aaron was starting to flake out
on some obligations, you know,
which kinda coincided with some of the more erratic behavior
that we were seeing towards the end.
♪
- Whew.
I'm like unexpectedly shaking, um,
and I think it's probably because--
♪
Um--
I haven't really processed this.
♪
Aaron was scheduled on my podcast, that was in September.
I shoot ahead of time,
so that means that Aaron's episode...
[sighs] ...was meant to air
a couple months down the line.
♪
Hey, so today on Vulnerable, I am my own guest.
♪
We had a wonderful guest, um, booked to come on,
but you know, currently we don't have an ETA
on whether that guest is able to come.
♪
I knew something was wrong when he didn't show up.
♪
- In the final kind of weeks, month, uh, with Aaron, you know,
he started missing deadlines and missed a couple shows
and sessions and-and, you know,
that was incredibly uncharacteristic of him.
♪
CHRISTY: He was doing these disturbing Lives.
And it just felt really eerie.
[rattling]
One of the final Lives he did,
there was some sort of like a strange sound
that was coming from his room.
[hissing]
[Aaron muttering]
[muttering continues]
And at that point I was like...
the clock's ticking.
♪
It was very, very disturbing.
♪
- The huffing thing, um,
that was a pretty good indicator that it was hittin' the fan.
♪
- I was out of the house and I said, "Is this real?"
And he said, "No, I'm messing with you."
And I said, "No, you're not."
♪
TAYLOR: Well, he denied it.
He said, you know, "It's fake, it's not real,
they all think I'm huffing."
♪
MELANIE: I said, "This is serious."
So I called a welfare check on him
and then I called a neighbor and they went through the window
'cause I was two hours away.
- I kept pressing the issue, you know,
I kept pressing the issue and pressing the issue
and eventually, um,
eventually he owned that.
OPERATOR: B-cam. Mark.
BRENDEN BORROWMAN: Aaron's team reached out to me last fall.
The first concern was his use of huffing
and if there was a treatment protocol available
to help remediate that.
TAYLOR: Aaron was doing an outpatient program.
The outpatient was not cutting it.
We were trying to find him some help,
try to get him back, back on the wagon.
- So step one would've been flying out to Utah.
♪
And he would've been there for 14 days,
working with all of our specialists
and getting to a point where we felt comfortable and confident
for him to move to the next phase,
which is more just emotional coaching.
♪
He would've been completely off the grid.
And then the following two weeks
the team would've went back to California with him
to help him adjust.
- We're talking the real deal.
And that's a massive commitment,
and he was terrified to do that.
♪
His excuse was, "I'll do it, I need to get my son back first."
♪
And my argument to him is,
I would think the other way around
would probably have been the best way to go.
He didn't wanna hear that.
He was stuck in a really deep, very long addiction
that he battled his whole life.
By the time he realized he needed to beat that monster,
I think the monster was a little too big, you know.
♪
OPERATOR: 18 Gold, take three. Marker.
- ♪ Nobody notices anything, not one-- ♪
I did that when I was 15, 16. MAN: And we're set.
AARON: Twenty years ago.
WOMAN: Hmm. AARON: Jesus.
MAN: And we're set.
DIRECTOR: Action.
- I feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders.
I--
I've seen a lot,
I've been through... a lot.
♪
But mostly I'm... I'm judged...
♪
without ever having a chance to share my side of the story.
And trust me, there's,
there's always two sides to every story.
♪
- In October 2022,
I had absolutely no indication
of him struggling while we were on set.
- Who's throwing the grapes?
- We would win. No, there's gotta be teams. Babe?
- Go further.
[all cheering]
OLIVE CHIACCHIA: I think that Aaron wanted to share
more about the positives and the successes
that he's had in the last couple years
that felt so overshadowed by all of the issues
he had around addiction and mental health.
- There's a, a stigma against me.
♪
Like I'm this... bad guy.
- It's possible that he was, that he was going through it,
but when he came on set, like, that guy was just a pistol.
He just, he crushed it.
- I'm Aaron. - [stammers] Hey-hey, I love you.
- Definitely is his best self when he's working
because he's doing what he loves
in an environment where people love him back.
OLIVE: As soon as the lights were on,
he was on, he was ready.
He knew his lines, frontwards, backwards, sideways.
He knew everybody's lines.
BRIAN FARMER: I felt like he was really trying
and I think towards the end of his life
was when he was really trying to turn it around,
more so than any other time before.
- If people just listened, if they really, really listened,
they'd know it doesn't just stem from me.
Blame it on... childhood, blame it on circumstances,
blame it on my brother.
But just know that I've turned it around
and I've got a lot to say.
♪
DISPATCHER [over radio]: Attention, Lancaster units, code three. Response is needed.
♪
[Melanie crying] [indistinct chatter]
- It's okay, it's okay, it's okay.
[crying] It's okay, it's okay.
♪
MELANIE: I got a phone call that the,
the house sitter found him.
[crying continues]
♪
[indistinct radio chatter]
DISPATCHER: ...121.
Lancaster unit in three or less.
♪
- I called Nick,
and I said, "Hey, bud."
Uh--
I'm hearing some things about your brother.
♪
[cries]
MELANIE: I was actually in shock,
like, I didn't even know it was--
Everyone told me, they're like, "Melanie, you were in shock,
like, you didn't, you were in another world."
♪
God. [inhales and exhales]
♪
[sighs] God.
♪
- I woke up about ten o'clock
and I got a call about 10:20, so--
♪
It was crazy.
Right when I got that call,
every news outlet on the planet started calling.
NEWSCASTER: Breaking news tonight,
singer and reality TV star Aaron Carter has died.
- Aaron Carter was found dead here inside his--
NEWSCASTER: Remembering Aaron Carter.
- Bad news indeed. Aaron Carter, just 34 years old.
- I believe it was in my social media
that he had passed away.
[cell phone chimes]
- I got an alert on my phone, like a push alert.
[cell phone dings]
- I think I found out on Twitter.
- I actually got a text.
- It immediately made me feel like I was nine again
and that he was also nine,
and I was like, "Well, he's so young, like, he's a little kid."
♪
[inaudible]
- There’s a part of you that’s just like, "Damn it."
Knowing he’s a father now
and knowing how hard he had tried to turn his life around.
He ran out of time, you know.
He ran out of time to get his happy ending.
- Aaron Carter's legacy is tied
to the legacy of what happens to child stars everywhere.
It's a reminder of how quickly
you are used up and forgotten...
[audience cheering]
♪
[laughs]
...not just by your audience,
but by the machine
that employed you in the first place.
[cheering]
[indistinct]
MAN: Tonight, uh, we've got a little bit of heavy hearts,
because we lost one of our family members yesterday.
♪
AJ: We were in London.
Nick was just... hysterical.
Um, he was angry, he was sad,
probably every emotion you could imagine.
[overlapping chatter] - Ask Cliff, Cliff knows.
AJ: Because even though they never reconciled,
that's still your baby brother.
[squeals] [indistinct chatter]
♪
TAYLOR: One of the last things we talked about
was his regret about his part in his relationship with his brother.
And they had reached out to each other,
same with Angel, his sister.
♪
Even through the bad and a lot of the tough things
that Aaron went through in his life...
♪
under that person there was an incredibly wonderful soul.
- What's up, y'all?
[cheering]
- There are still people singing his songs.
♪
- ♪ I want candy ♪
AARON: Let's go! Jump, jump!
DR. STORK: At the end of the day he wanted to be viewed
as a musician and a performer.
♪ upbeat music playing ♪
[cheering]
♪
He cared a lot about his fans.
♪
Deep down, he was like a good kid.
♪
MELANIE: I want Aaron to be remembered
as the funny, smart, caring, and forgiving human
that he was to a lot of people.
[indistinct yelling]
[camera shutter clicking]
- Aaron Carter's life story in one sentence?
A beautiful tragedy.
'Cause he did have a beautiful life when things were good.
Beautiful tragedy.
♪
The last thing I'll say is just to anyone out there that's struggling,
you're not alone.
There is multiple ways to ask for help.
There is hotlines, there is programs.
But the biggest thing is you're not alone
and don't be afraid to ask for help.
Uh, you know, before it's too late.
♪
♪ Go on, carry the weight of the world on your shoulders ♪
♪ So far you're telling me with no words of your own ♪
♪ Well, I've been waiting so long ♪
♪ Will you give me something to hold on to? ♪
♪ If you're gonna say it, well ♪
♪ Then you better say it now ♪
♪ Before it's too late ♪
♪
♪ Before it's too late ♪