Clay Aiken, the singer and actor who began his career on American Idol before appearing on Broadway, talks about how his life and career changed after coming out as gay in 2008. Aiken spoke in a new interview with People, the same publication where he announced his coming out with a cover story in September 2008.

Aiken shared that he lost “50 percent” of his fan base after the cover was released.

“It was a big deal back then,” he said, talking about how the public reception of celebrities coming out had changed drastically in 16 years. “We live in a completely different time.”

At the time of his coming out, Aiken was starring on Broadway in “Spamalot” and shared that ticket sales dropped after his bombshell “People” cover hit newsstands.

“For the first four months I was there, the show was sold out, standing room only. You can actually look at ticket sales the week after the cover came out,” he says. “It sold very well until ticket sales dropped the week after the cover came out. Spamalot eventually closed a few months later.”

BroadwayWorld’s gross sales report shows that the production went from $642,920 and an 82% sellout rate in the week ending August 31, 2008 to $318,167 and a 41% sellout rate the following week.

However, Aiken said he doesn’t regret his decision and is glad the world has changed since then.

“There is progress and that means we are on the right track as a country,” he said.

Read the original story on People.

Clay Aiken most recently returned to Broadway in 2018 in Ruben & Clay’s 1st Annual Christmas Carol Family Fun Pageant Spectacular Reunion Show, ten years after his critically acclaimed debut in Monty Python’s Spamalot. He became the first artist in history, following “American Idol,” to have his first single debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. His subsequent album, Measure of a Man, also debuted at No. 1 and achieved the highest first-week sales by a debut artist.

His 2004 holiday release “Merry Christmas with Love” set a record for the fastest-selling holiday album of the SoundScan era and remains the highest-grossing holiday album debut in Billboard history. He served as a UNICEF Ambassador for nine years and in 2003, together with Diane Bubel, founded what is now the National Inclusion Project, which advocates for the inclusion of children with disabilities in extracurricular activities (such as summer camps, etc.) and increases opportunities (extracurricular programs) with them their non-disabled classmates.

His new Christmas album “Christmas Bells are Ringing” was released on November 22nd.