Aaron Carter’s Family Hoped Dancing with the Stars Casting Would ‘Change His Life’ as His Addiction Struggles Continued

Aaron Carter’s siblings were always rooting for him.

Angel Carter Conrad looks back at one particular opportunity she thought could help heal him in the new Paramount+ documentary The Carters: Hurts to Love You. Aaron’s twin recalls learning that her brother would compete on season 9 of Dancing with the Stars.

“When Aaron joined Dancing with the Stars in 2009, we were all so excited for him. He was excited and I knew that he was going to be amazing because he was an incredible dancer,” the 37-year-old shares. “We all looked at it as this opportunity for Aaron to hopefully change his life and do something better.”

Melissa Joan Hart appeared on that season of DWTS with Aaron. Having previously worked with both Aaron and his brother, Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter, she was excited at the chance to reconnect, too.

“To see him on the set of Sabrina [the Teenage Witch] as this little boy who was goofy and silly and loving life and loved hamming it up for the camera and then to see him on DWTS and now he’s older and you can see he’s in his head …” she begins in the documentary.

“I feel like at this point he was past the pop star phase but I feel like there was this gap in transitioning like we do from child to adult and trying to figure out who you are as an adult,” Hart, 48, continues.

“Are you an adult actor, are you a pop star still? Can you be a pop star still? Where do you fit? You could just see that he was trying so hard. He seemed really vulnerable.”

To this point, the siblings were concerned for Aaron as he struggled with addiction. During their time together filming their 2006 family reality series House of Carters, they expressed concern.

“I remember the last day that we had finished, we were all sitting in the living room and [older brother Nick] sat us all down and said, ‘Who wants to go to therapy? I’ll pay for it.’ And I was the only one who said I would go,” Angel shares of the five siblings.

When asked by the documentary’s producers, “Do you think it’s one of the main reasons that you and Nick are still here?,” she replies, “I do.”

“I think it is the reason we are still here because we got help. After House of Carters, Aaron was already deep in his drug addiction. Marijuana was a major issue for him, probably the first addiction he had. He explored taking ecstasy at a young age, huffing duster cans, and you know Xanax was a big problem for him. We were privately trying to help him.”

Aaron died on Nov. 5, 2022, at age 34 in a drug-related accidental drowning. His sister Bobbie Jean died in December 2023 at the age of 41, from intoxication by the combined effects of fentanyl and methamphetamine. They were preceded in death by sister Leslie, who died of an apparent overdose in January 2012 at age 25.

The Carters: Hurts to Love You is a two-part documentary that was directed by Soleil Moon Frye, herself a former child star who turns the lens on a family that faced similar levels of fame at a young age.

“For me, one of the most painful parts of this journey was really living through their family archives and seeing and witnessing what was happening and what these children were going through,” Frye, 48, recently told PEOPLE. “And so the fact that Aaron was then growing up in front of the world and that feeling of wanting to be loved and then not always feeling that love back, there’s a lot of layers to it.”

The Carters: Hurts to Love You is now streaming on Paramount+.