The first time Soleil Moon Frye met Aaron Carter was on the set of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.”
“He was really little and I was a little more than a teen,” Frye tells TODAY.com. “He had this vibrant, beautiful personality and this huge spirit and this heart full of love. I remember him coming on set and just shining his bright light, and we were all dancing, and I have this beautiful, fond memory.”
The late teen idol made an appearance in the Season 5 episode entitled “Beach Blanket Bizarro,” where Sabrina (Melissa Joan Hart) and her friends — including Frye’s Roxy — spend spring break in Florida and are transported into a ‘60s beach movie. Carter, who was 13 when the episode aired in 2001, performed his hit “I Want Candy” at a beach party.
Little did Frye know that years later she would be trusted with directing and bringing Carter’s tragic family story to life in “The Carters: Hurts to Love You.”
Now streaming on Paramount+, the two-part documentary is told from Carter’s twin sister Angel Carter Conrad’s perspective and shines a light on the their family’s upbringing, from older brother, Backstreet Boy member Nick Carter’s rise to fame, Aaron Carter’s success, his death, as well as the death of their father and two other siblings.
Frye was inspired by Carter Conrad’s courage and resilience despite her generational trauma and family losses. The documentary uses archival footage and personal interviews to explore mental health, addiction and life after the death of so many family members. It also includes an intimate and emotional conversation between Nick Carter and Carter Conrad.
Angel Carter Conrad in The Carters.Paramount+
Frye tells TODAY.com that “The Carters: Hurts to Love You” was created through Carter Conrad’s lens, and that she was “blown away by her courageous heart” amid so much loss.
She adds despite all the heartbreak, “She had so much light in her… She really was able to take so much pain and darkness and turn it into a sense of purpose and life.”
“It was really inspiring to me and really why I wanted to go on this journey with her,” she says.
The Carter family story
Jane and the late Robert “Bob” Carter met when she was hitchhiking on the side of the road after her car broke down, Conrad Carter says in the documentary.
According to her, he pulled over to help Jane Carter and “she knew who he was. He was Bobby Carter, and all the women knew who he was when she met my dad. I don’t think that she ever thought that she could be with him because my dad was a womanizer.”
The couple would go on to have five children together; Nick, Bobbie Jean, Leslie and twins Angel and Aaron Carter.
A still of Aaron, Angel, Nick, Leslie and Bobbie Carter featured in The Carters, streaming on Paramount+, 2025. Paramount+
The couple separated in March 2004, before later divorcing — a situation that heavily impacted their children, according to Carter Conrad.
In the documentary, she shares how their parents struggled with alcoholism, mental health issues and that her father cheated on her mom frequently. Nick Carter also says at one point that fame and money changed his parents.
The family endured four unimaginable deaths, first with Leslie Carter, who died in 2012 at age 25 of an overdose of a prescription medication.
Bob Carter, who was a father of 8, according to Carter Conrad, died in May 2017 at the age of 65, followed by Aaron Carter who was found dead in his Lancaster, California, home on Nov. 5, 2022 at the age of 34.
Bobbie Jean Carter died in December 2023 at age 41.
Exploring the archival Carter family footage
A still of Angel Carter Conrad and Aaron Carter featured in The Carters.Paramount+
Frye recalls going to Carter Conrad’s home, where she had stacks of home videotapes and photo albums tucked away in a closet. Seeing the magnitude of content they would be going through, she says, felt like opening up Pandora’s box.
“(Angel) had never watched them. The family had never seen them,” Frye says, noting that the first time Carter Conrad watches the home video was captured for the documentary. “She had a great deal of trust with me. She just handed it over to me and said, ‘Tell our story.’”
“She had a great deal of trust with me. She just handed it over to me and said, ‘Tell our story.’”
Soleil Moon Frye
What Frye discovered in the family footage, she says, was “so heart-wrenching.” The director saw how the parents dealt with their son’s newfound fame and money, while other documentary subjects recalled the family’s behind-the-scenes turmoil.
“For myself, growing up in the business, I saw so many of my own friends’ experiences,” says Frye, who found fame at a young age starring in “Punky Brewster.” “The fact that there was so much attention on the young boys made it so that there was this sense of neglect that (Angel) and her siblings had.”
In the documentary, Carter Conrad describes herself and her sisters being neglected as children. Frye believes what “saved” Carter Conrad from going down a dark path was that she had friends whose homes she could go to.
“As devastating as that neglect was, it perhaps was part of what became so much of her strength,” Frye says.
Capturing a pivotal moment between Nick Carter and Angel Carter Conrad
Nick Carter and Angel Carter Conrad in The Carters.Paramount+
As the journey of telling the Carter family story continued, Frye found the perfect opportunity to include Nick Carter in the project.
During a post-screening Q&A in Los Angeles on April 9, Frye told audiences that she first went to London on her birthday to try and convince the singer to be a part of the film.
“Nick was performing in London. I was in another country and I really knew how much Angel loved her brother, and her brother was a part of her story,” Frye said.
She told him how much she loved his sister and wanted to give them a safe space to share their story. “And we shared a cupcake and the rest was history,” she said.
Viewers see Nick Carter and Carter Conrad backstage at one of his shows in Chicago. Frye, with her iPhone, is off to the side and records one of the first times that Nick Carter is seen speaking out on the death of his younger brother and their family.
“Nick had never shared the process of losing his brother, and it was very clear to me in that moment that he was sharing with his sister, that that was really the first time that he was sharing about the loss of his brother,” Frye tells TODAY.com.
“To see those walls break down and the emotions … I had been living in the archival where I had seen so much love between these brothers, and then to just watch those walls breaking down, it was devastating to witness.”
The siblings’ conversation continues in another emotional beachside moment, which Frye says wasn’t planned and captured in real time.
Behind the scenes with Director Soleil Moon Fry in The Carters.Paramount+
Carter Conrad also touched on her brother’s unexpected participation during the Q&A, telling audiences, “I knew that if Nick was going to participate in this and to tell his truth, that it needed to be in that way.”
The conversation, she believed, was cathartic for the Backstreet Boy member.
“We just sat down and it was just a real conversation. And I think that throughout this entire film, in order for it to work, it had to be authentic. It had to be the truth and unfortunately, the truth is ugly at times,” Carter Conrad said. “I don’t think he saw that coming. I didn’t think he knew that he was going to have that reaction.”
She added that she left the trip and thought to herself, “Oh my God, I think he had a breakthrough and he needed this. This was meant to happen for him, emotionally.”
Frye also recalled one of the last things Nick Carter saying in the room was, “Wow, I really must have had to get that out.”
Aaron Carter & Nick Carter in Pasadena, California in 2002.Steve Granitz / WireImage
Reflecting on her own child stardom and watching the Carter archival footage, Frye tells TODAY.com, “How many times can somebody break before it just explodes?”
Watching hours of Nick and Aaron Carter rehearsing as children, she said she also loved acting and performing — but when is it too much?
“I look at so many of the people we love, so many of our favorite pop stars … some that are still with us, some that we’ve lost. And you go, ‘Wow, to what cost on people’s mental health?” she asks.
Above all else, Frye calls directing “The Carters: Hurts to Love You” a “healing experience” and was grateful to be able to show the love the Carter siblings had for one another.
“That was really important to me because I could see that there was just so much love despite all of the pain,” Frye says.
