On December 26, 2006, Days of Our Lives had a special holiday episode. Clay Aiken was a celebrity guest, playing himself. According to the storyline, Clay gave a special, private concert at a Salem club called Dune. The audience was only Patch (Stephen Nichols) and Kayla (Mary Beth Evans). It seems they offered to help Clay get to the airport when his car got stranded. Clay performed two songs. First, “Oh Holy Night” was used in the background. Then Clay sang “Everything I Have” for the private concert.
The episode was originally taped on November 14th. Clay joked on one of his blogs that he was a bit concerned that Kristy and Mary would be a bit too excited at the taping and make spectacles of themselves. It seems both are big Days of Our Lives fans.
Stephen Nichols writes a blog. He wrote a small article about Clay’s visit.
Coming up: in their new found bliss, Steve surprises Kayla with tickets to a Clay Aiken concert, but Steve’s reading of the Christmas story at the hospital runs late, so he and Kayla miss the concert. Steve runs into Clay on his way out and talks him into doing a private Christmas concert. There were so many people at the studio who are fans of Clay — the excitement was palpable. Josh Taylor said he was a big fan, and Clay’s best friend and roommate, Christy, is a huge fan of Days, so I asked Josh if he could introduce Christy to the rest of the cast. He was happy to do it. Clay was very gracious, taking photos and signing autographs.
When we got to rehearsal and tape, Clay asked if he needed to stick to the script because he would “never remember the lines.” I told him I had tweaked my lines around a bit and we could just play and not worry about the script. He was happy to improvise with me. In this situation, Clay just being himself worked well and it didn’t have that staid feeling of something scripted. Kudos to our director, Roger Inman, for always being there to get the shots. The song was very sweet and quite apropos for Steve to offer Kayla. All in all, I think the day was a success. (You can see all photos at stephennichols.net.
It was a very successful visit for Clay. There was a huge amount of publicity regarding the performance. There were mentions on almost all the on-line entertainment sites and short mentions in many magazines, including People and Soap Opera Digest.
According to Soap Opera Network, the rating for the show was very good and everyone seemed impressed with how a visit from Clay Aiken could boost the ratings so much.
It is always fun to see Clay guest on a TV program. We can only hope that there will be many more in 2010.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VE-fiQ-ODM