Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger opened up in a new documentary about the moment he decided to tell his then-wife Maria Shriver that he had fathered a son with their housekeeper.
In the Netflix docuseries titled “Arnold,” the 75-year-old actor said he revealed the affair during a counseling session, admitting the relationship with he had with Mildred Baena, and that he was the biological father of her son, Joseph Baena, now 25, People magazine reported.
“Maria and I went to counseling once a week,” Schwarzenegger said. “And in one of the sessions the counselor said, ‘I think today Maria wants to be very specific about something. She wants to know if you are the father of Joseph.’ And I was like — I thought my heart stopped, and then I told the truth.”
It sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger struggled to tell his then wife Maria Shriver about his secret son with their housekeeper Mildred Baena.https://t.co/VtNQgOWFa5
— CNN (@CNN) June 5, 2023
“‘Yes, Maria, Joseph is my son,'” he added. “She was crushed because of that. I had an affair in ’96. In the beginning I really didn’t know. I just started feeling the older he got the more it became clear to me and then it was really just a matter of how do you keep this quiet? How do you keep this a secret?”
The actor also admitted he’s reluctant to talk about it because “every time I do it opens up the wounds again.”
“I think that I have caused enough pain for my family because of my f*** up,” the “Terminator” star said. “Everyone had to suffer. Maria had to suffer. The kids had to suffer. Joseph. His mother. Everyone.”
“I am going to have to live with it the rest of my life,” he added. “People will remember my successes and they will also remember my failures. This is a major failure. I had failures in the past in my career, but this is a whole different ball game, dimension of failure.”
“It was wrong what I did. But I don’t want to make Joseph feel that he is not welcomed in this world — because he is very much welcomed in this world,” he added. “I love him and he has turned out to be an extraordinary young man.”
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Schwarzenegger and Shriver tied the knot in 1986 and share four kids together, Katherine, Christina, Patrick, and Christopher. The couple’s separation was announced in May 2011. Their divorce was finalized in December 2021.
“Arnold” begins streaming on Netflix on June 7.