Wayne Brady ’s ex-girlfriend quietly gave birth to his son back in 2022.
In a recent interview with People ahead of his new Freeform reality show Wayne Brady: The Family Remix , the 52-year-old comedian explained what it was like finding out that Tina, whom he dated on and off during the Covid-19 pandemic, was pregnant.
“I was shocked,” he told the outlet. “I asked the silly question that I think many men since the beginning of time have asked. “‘How?’ You know how! So get past it.”
He said that he first received the news that Tina was pregnant when he returned from his grandmother Valerie’s funeral, which took place in the Virgin Islands. The two ended up naming his son after her, shortening the name to Val Henry.
Despite the pregnancy not being planned, Brady said that he never wanted his son to feel the same love that his 21-year-old daughter Maile Brady, shared with his ex-wife Mandie Taketa.
“I never want Val to grow up thinking that he should be ashamed or look back and go, ‘Oh, my dad didn’t want me,’ or he was ashamed of me. Because I want him, in his own way, to know that I love him as much as I love Maile, who is of me and that I had a part in creating,” he said. “So I had to do that work.”
When Maile first heard that she would be an older sister, she told the outlet that she first experienced “mixed feelings” because “it came out of left field in a lot of ways.”
“I learned this phrase: ‘Not my circus, not my monkeys,’ and I was like, ‘All right, cool. Have fun with that. I am 21 now. It’s not my baby,” she said, mentioning that it could change their family’s dynamic for the better.
“This is kind of an opportunity for all of us to grow up and see how that dynamic works as individuals,” she said.
Following Brady and Taketa’s divorce in 2008, she began dating one of Brady’s backup dancers, Jason Fordham, one year later. The two of them currently share a two-year-old son named Sundance. The four of them have decided to call themselves the “Core Four” because of how often they are all together.
Fordham explained that despite having no connection to Val, he is willing to help whenever needed. “I’m in it with Sundance, you know what I mean?” he said to People .
“You go back to the diapers and all that stuff. That’s what came to mind… I’m like, ‘Okay, let’s save this stuff. Sundance outgrew it, but little one’s on the way.’ And then I start kind of thinking like that. ‘Okay, we got this stroller.’ That kind of thing.”
Because Brady and Tina don’t live near each other, he explained that he does see his son every day on FaceTime when he can’t be there in person.
“I’m super sweet because it’s the little guy,” Brady said about his parenting style with his youngest son. “It’s a different type of parenting than when Maile was born, because [Mandie and I] were together. It’s a completely different form of co-parenting.”
“I’m going to nurture him, and I’m going to let him flower and let him do his thing,” he continued. “He will have boundaries, but he’s never going to grow up feeling like he can’t talk. To this day, I can recall when I know that I’m not supposed to speak. I can feel the tightness right here when I know that I’m supposed to just sit down and be quiet – and I don’t want that for him.”
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