Clay Aiken Opens Up About His Tense On-Air Exchange With Kelly Ripa 20 Years Later

The "American Idol" alum is revisiting a 2006 on-air clash with Kelly Ripa that spiraled far beyond what he ever anticipated — and left him with lasting scars.

Clay Aiken is looking back on one of the most "catastrophic" weeks of his career. The singer and TV personality recently reflected on his tense on-air exchange with Kelly Ripa on what was then "Live with Regis and Kelly."

Aiken was filling in for Regis Philbin on a 2006 episode of the talk show.

During the segment, he placed his hand over Ripa's mouth mid-interview in a playful attempt to slow her down after she'd fielded a string of questions without giving him a chance to get a word in.

Ripa, however, was less than amused. "Is that a no-no?" Aiken asked at the time. "Oh, that's a no, no, no," she shot back, adding, "I don't know where that hand's been, honey."

Aiken spoke candidly about the incident — and the backlash that followed — during his appearance on the "Hollywood Raw" podcast on June 24. "No one would remember but me," the 47-year-old said, "because I was the one with the scars."

He recalled feeling genuinely stifled during the taping.

"I'm on the show because I wanted to show them I could handle this myself, I could host something. And I wasn't getting to talk," he said. "Like, there were cue cards. They had my name on them. So I tried to be funny, and I did what I did, which was incredibly innocent."

The mood shifted quickly. "And then it got a little cold in the room. I felt bad and I was really worried that I had upset her," he admitted. Though he tried to put the moment behind him, it had already taken on a life of its own.

The following week, Philbin returned to the show — and Ripa used the platform to publicly call out Aiken for what she described as "hostility" and "impropriety."

"There was a lack of respect, and when you're a certain person, you're in the public eye, you have to be respectful of other people. And I don't think that he was respectful in any way," she said at the time.

"If that upsets his fans, I'm sorry to hear that, but you don't put your hands over somebody's face and mouth when they're conducting an interview, even if it's for a laugh. And that's all I'm gonna say."

The controversy escalated further when Rosie O'Donnell weighed in during a live taping of "The View," labeling Ripa's reaction "homophobic." Ripa called in to defend herself — but for Aiken, the moment carried a different kind of weight entirely.

"I was not out at the time. I was to Rosie," he explained. "I was out to people who I knew, but I wasn't publicly out about it. I was not out to my grandparents and the people in my family."

What followed left him reeling.

"Not only does Rosie call it a homophobic remark — which I think she accidentally said, and then she tried to walk it back a little bit — but then Kelly calls in live to 'The View' that day and they get in an argument over it," Aiken said.

"Not only did she out me, but they had a big argument about whether I was gay and who talked about me being gay."

Feeling like he was "caving in" on himself, Aiken turned to Diane Sawyer for guidance. She advised him to wait and see if the storm would pass.

In the meantime, he found a way to laugh it off. Tori Spelling playfully placed her hand over his mouth while the two presented together at the AMAs, offering a bit of comic relief amid the chaos.

His team also unearthed footage of Ripa doing the very same thing to Philbin. Armed with that, Aiken sent Ripa flowers, and when she called to thank him, the tension between them began to thaw.

"She apologized for it becoming blown out of proportion and everything," he recalled. "She said, 'Come back on the show anytime, etcetera, etcetera.' But I do know we tried and were not allowed. So I just haven't tried since. It's not a big deal. I mean, I honestly have not spoken about it until right now."