Nick Carter maintains his innocence following the release of Investigation Discovery’s Fallen Idols: Aaron and Nick Carter, which aired Monday and Tuesday night.
The four-part docuseries featured interviews with former Dream pop group member Melissa Schuman, Shannon “Shay” Ruth and Ashley Repp, three women who have come forward and accused the Backstreet Boys frontman of sexual assault.
“These are exactly the same outrageous claims that led us to sue this gang of conspirators,” Carter’s attorney, Dale Hayes, Jr., said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “Those cases are working their way through the legal system now, and, based on both the initial court rulings and the overwhelming evidence, we have every belief that we will prevail and hold them accountable for spreading these falsehoods.”
Over the years, Carter has maintained that the women featured in the docuseries conspired to extort, harass and defame him with their allegedly false claims, so he and his legal team have countered the women’s suits with their own.
In a conversation with THR, Fallen Idols executive producer Michael Hirschorn explained they were consistently in touch with Carter’s team throughout filming, regularly giving him a chance to comment, but he refused.
“Journalistically, if there were allegations that were made, the things that were contended by some of the women or other people we spoke to, we asked for responses from the Carter camp,” he told THR. “At every point, we have also included legal documents as part of a resource for people who want to dig more deeply into the project and want to learn more, because there’s a significant paper trail of charges and counter-charges.”
Hirschorn, showrunner Elissa Halperin and ID president Jason Sarlanis thought it was crucial to be empathetic and fair in Fallen Idols, ensuring they were an objective third party.
“We want to give [the alleged victims] a platform and a forum to say what they want to say, and we’re very comfortable that we conveyed the essence of what they wanted to say accurately,” the EP said. “But then it was incumbent on us to make sure that if the Nick Carter camp … had an opportunity to respond, that we were representing and weighing those responses in a thoughtful way. And that was really tricky.”
All four episodes of Fallen Idols are now streaming on Max.
