Why a new documentary revisits Aaron Carter’s tragic undoing

What Soleil Moon Frye remembers most about young Aaron Carter is his “bright, bubbly, beautiful personality.” The pop sensation was only 13 years old when he guest-starred on a 2001 episode of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” and Frye, who played Sabrina’s college roommate, recalled in a recent interview that she was struck by how “vivacious and full of life” he seemed to be. It couldn’t have been easy growing up in the spotlight, let alone as Backstreet Boy Nick’s younger brother.

Having risen to fame herself as the precocious title character of the 1980s sitcom “Punky Brewster,” Frye, 48, knows a thing or two about life as a child star. Without the right guardrails, kid performers’ people-pleasing tendencies can spiral into a loss of identity. Early fame threw the Carter family into tumult. Aaron, the youngest of five siblings, and Nick, the oldest, became the primary breadwinners while their three sisters — Bobbie Jean, Leslie and Aaron’s twin, Angel — grew to feel neglected by parents who devoted most of their attention to the boys’ burgeoning careers.

Frye explores this troubling dynamic in “The Carters: Hurts to Love You,” a two-part documentary premiering Tuesday on Paramount+. The actress turned filmmaker relies on Angel’s perspective — supplemented by family photos, home videos and news coverage — to ground the narrative, which begins with her brothers’ high-profile careers; encompasses Aaron’s deteriorating mental health and substance abuse struggles; and concludes with utter devastation. Three of the Carter kids suffered drug-related deaths: Leslie in 2012, Aaron in 2022 and Bobbie Jean in 2023.

“The Carters” is Frye’s second documentary in recent years to dissect life in the limelight; the other, her 2021 Hulu film, “Kid 90,” included video she took in the 1990s of her Hollywood peers — some of whom died by suicide or drug overdose. Bobbie Jean died while “The Carters” was still in development, and Frye’s former boyfriend, singer Seth “Shifty Shellshock” Binzer, also died of an overdose after she began shooting interviews. She and Angel bonded over the tragedies.

“It was a way to process so much of our grief,” Frye said. “It was a healing experience for all of us.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Why was this a story you wanted to tell?

A: I always wanted to tell a story that had to do with mental health and addiction. I feel we’re facing such a global crisis right now — more than ever — and to be able to have open conversations and dialogues around how this is affecting us globally was so important to me. I met Angel and was so blown away by her courage and her brave heart, and [how] she had been through so much tragedy and so much pain in her life and really wanted to take that pain and turn it into purpose.

So many of us grew up listening to Aaron and Nick, and hearing so many stories. I felt such a moral responsibility to create a safe space and come at this without judgment or assumption.

Q: What was the context of your meeting with Angel?

A: Some journalists who had met Angel approached me about sitting down and meeting with her a few years ago. I had experienced firsthand what it was like to love someone who was sober when we came together and then relapsed, and so when [Angel and I] met, we had this shared bond around looking at mental illness from a perspective of empathy and at addiction as a disease.

Q: Having grown up in the public eye yourself, did you feel especially equipped to direct this project?

A: I had no idea the way in which this would peel back the onion for myself as well. I had an incredible childhood with so much love and light, and had a foundation where I was still very much able to be a kid. But I also experienced a roller coaster of emotions. Some of my friends have gone on to live the most exquisite lives and are flourishing, and then there are some of my best friends and loved ones who I lost along the way. Some of the closest people to me, who just didn’t make it.

Sharing these experiences through “Kid 90” and “The Carters” has allowed people to have a deeper understanding of this world. It has been so important to me to pull back the veil and try being an instrument for something so much larger than myself, you know? When you look at the archival footage and see Nick at the piano, doing everything he can to be the best singer he can possibly be, and watch Aaron in the rehearsal process, … it reminds me of all these incredible musicians, artists and athletes who get pushed to be the best. What is that breaking point?

Q: Why did you anchor the documentary in Angel’s point of view?

A: It was always Angel’s story. In conversations with [producers] and Paramount+, I said, “Please, if you let me make a documentary around mental health and addiction told through the lens of breaking generational patterns, … I am all in.” [Angel] has gone through so much, but she was never the one in front of the camera. She was always behind the scenes. She never wanted fame. She will say herself that the fact that she went through so much neglect was probably one of the reasons she’s still here. She had friends who [fostered] a sense of normalcy. She also didn’t want her siblings to die without their message coming through, because grief is how she keeps their memory alive.

Q: Were there any especially difficult moments to work through with Angel?

A: I went to her house and into this bathroom where all of these home videos were stacked up to the ceiling. Tapes and photo albums. She and Nick had never seen some of the footage of them growing up. To witness what was going on in their home … was such a painful part of the process.

We went to Chicago, where Nick was performing, and he sat down with Angel. I could see his neck was flushed. I pointed to my phone because I felt like there was something to be shared, … and he nodded, so I felt like it was OK for me to document this moment between them. He opened up, and it became very clear to me that this was the first time he was sharing the loss of his brother and so many of his own life experiences. That vulnerability, just allowing the walls to come down, … it was just the three of us in the room, and it was an incredibly emotional experience.

Q: I was quite moved by the empathy Angel showed for her parents.

A: The fact that her father was able to apologize toward the end of his life, when he realized all the mistakes that he made, that’s all she needed. That apology. Neither Angel nor Nick wanted to villainize their parents. We’re dealing with generational trauma, multigenerational patterns.

Q: I’d like to talk about what didn’t make it into the documentary, starting with Angel and Nick’s mother, who is still alive but didn’t participate in the project.

A: We reached out, and, yeah, she didn’t respond.

Q: Nick has been accused of sexual assault in recent years, but those allegations don’t make it into the documentary, either. Why did you decide to leave them out?

A: This documentary always started as Angel’s story. That wasn’t the documentary I was making.

Q: Toward the end, you include some of the more troubling correspondence between Angel and Aaron. Why did you choose to incorporate those?

A: Combing through the archives and all those messages, [you can hear] the struggle and the pain and the love in his voice. The frustration. You hear in that phone call — so soon before his passing — his love for his family. You really are on this journey of ups and downs, … and, in a world where there’s so much noise and so many people with different opinions, I felt there was no more important voice than Aaron’s. I felt like he was with me every step of the way of making this documentary.

Q: How did you land on “Hurts to Love You” as a subtitle?

A: “Hurts to Love You” is one of Nick’s songs, and, throughout their lives, music was a way for them to share their story. … To grieve so deeply means that we must have loved so deeply. The reason it hurts so much is because we love so much. You see that through Aaron’s beautiful, bright spirit. Angel says that, in his right mind, this is what he would have wanted: to make a difference, to touch lives, to be able to have his memory live on. The entire family deserves that. They deserve to be remembered.