Actor George Clooney admitted on Wednesday that he and his wife had made one massive mistake in parenting their five-year-old twins, Ella and Alexander: they allowed them to learn to speak Italian.
George and Amal Clooney sat down with host Gayle King on “CBS Mornings” for a segment dubbed “Life with the Clooneys” — and they talked about everything from their first impressions of each other to what it was like to be the parents of twins.
King set the conversation in motion when she asked the pair whether they would describe the twins as “chatty,” prompting the “Ocean’s Eleven” star to make a spontaneous confession.
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Amal and George Clooney are celebrating their eighth wedding anniversary.
They told @GayleKing about the letters George wrote to Amal in the early days of their relationship, their son’s pranking skills and the one thing they’ve never done. pic.twitter.com/61NuGzPuJJ
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) September 28, 2022
“We’ve made a terrible mistake. We taught them Italian,” he said.
“Oh,” King responded, but then laughed aloud as Clooney clarified, “We don’t speak Italian.”
“So, we’ve armed them with a language that they can harm us with. And we both don’t really know what they’re saying,” Clooney continued, prompting more laughter as he admitted that, in addition to Italian, the twins also spoke French.
“I’m from Kentucky. You know, English is my second language,” Clooney continued.
Amal cut in then, noting that the part of parenting that had truly caused her husband to light up was seeing his son take after him in one very specific way. “Our son is now a big prankster,” she said. “And he’s — you’ve basically taught him all of these lessons and he’s now pranking his dad back.
“Alexander’s favorite superhero is Batman,” the actor replied, saying that he had once asked his son about that, “I said, ‘What’s your favorite superhero?’ And he goes, ‘Batman.’ And I said, ‘You know I was Batman.’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, but not anymore.'”
“If only he knew how true that was,” Clooney laughed.
Clooney’s admitted mistake caught the attention of NBC “Today with Hoda and Jenna” hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager, who had a good laugh at the idea of two five-year-olds speaking a language their parents couldn’t understand.
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George and Amal Clooney are finding themselves in a tricky situation with their twins 😂 pic.twitter.com/8B6Cc2Bupb
— TODAY with Hoda & Jenna (@HodaAndJenna) September 29, 2022
“They just doubled their trouble in a major way,” Bush Hager laughed, noting that in a lot of cases — including her own with twin Barbara Bush Coyne — twins already had a secret language of sorts. Adding another on top of that, she said, was just asking for shenanigans.