Clay Aiken may have been defeated in his bid for North Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District seat, but his efforts will be chronicled in a new docuseries. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Esquire Network will premiere the four-hour series in early 2015.
A documentary team has been filming Aiken’s campaign closely since he first announced his run for Congress. The filmmaking duo behind the project, Simon and Jonathan Chinn, are cousins and co-founders of Lightbox, a multi-platform documentary production company. Simon has two Academy Awards (Searching For Sugar Man, Man On Wire), and Jonathan won an Emmy for American High.
The docuseries will capture the unique nature of Aiken’s run for Congress. As an openly gay Democrat running in a strongly conservative district, the former Idol runner-up faced an uphill fight against incumbent Republican Congresswoman Renee Ellmers. (Ballotpedia cites a strong lead held by Ellmers in earlier polling.) Aiken’s celebrity status generated substantial media attention, as did a strange and tragic turn in the primary, when former Commerce Secretary Keith Crisco was found dead days after losing his challenge to Aiken for the Democratic nomination.
Now that the campaign is over, Clay Aiken is free to plan the next act of his life. Previous experience suggests it may involve competing for hearts and minds by adhering to carefully rehearsed performances that are closely scrutinized by a producer named Simon, followed by a bruising second-place finish and concluding with a lucrative media deal.