Clay Aiken questions Shawn Mendes’ sexuality mid-interview: ‘I shouldn’t out him’
Clay Aiken randomly brought up Shawn Mendes’ sexuality while promoting his new Christmas album.
The “American Idol” alum, 45, sat down with Variety to discuss “Christmas Bells Are Ringing” when suddenly he asked the interviewer, “By the way, did Shawn Mendes come out today?”
“Have you seen this video on his Instagram? I didn’t finish watching it because I looked at the time and I was like, ‘Oh God, I gotta get on the computer.’ So I don’t know if he really did.”
It’s unclear which Instagram video Aiken was referring to, however, clips of Mendes sharing at one of his concerts in Colorado that he was “figuring out” his sexuality went viral in late October.
“I think sexuality is such a beautifully complex thing, and it’s so hard to just put into boxes,” the “There’s Nothing Holding Me Back” singer, 26, explained to his audience at the time.
“It always felt like such an intrusion on something very personal to me. Something that I was figuring out in myself, something that I had yet to discover and still have yet to discover it.”
Mendes — who has publicly dated only women, including singer Camila Cabello, until now — concluded, “The real truth about my life and my sexuality is that, man, I’m just figuring it out like everyone. And I don’t really know sometimes and I know other times.”
Aiken, who came out as gay in 2008, recognized in his Variety interview, “I shouldn’t out him if he didn’t.”
However, the “Invisible” singer added that he doesn’t believe that the media speculates about celebs’ sexuality in the same way they did when he was still in the closet in the early aughts.
“I feel like no one has speculated about s–t since 2000 — since I went through that crap,” he said.
“I joke that after I came out publicly, it stopped being a story. I don’t know that anybody has had press in that way, like tabloid stories or questions by Diane Sawyer.”
Aiken surmised that perhaps the public “got bored” with that topic after he was at the center of it.
The political activist also noted that the former military policy “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — in which members of the LGBTQIA+ community were allowed to serve as long as they did not disclose their sexuality — ended in 2011 so America “came to terms” with “gays a little better” since then.
“We have insisted our media become more empathetic,” he added. “Press can’t invade in the way they used to be able to invade. And that’s great.”
Aiken then told Variety he “didn’t mean to derail” the interview, stating the clip of Mendes had “just came up on [his] screen right before [he] turned on the computer” for the sit-down.
Page Six has reached out to Mendes’ reps for comment but did not immediately hear back.
