Comedian George Lopez recently revealed the moment he decided to reconcile with his estranged daughter, Mayan.
The 61-year-old actor discussed some personal details of his family drama while promoting the new series “Lopez vs. Lopez,” which is a fictional version of what he went through with his real daughter.
“I was divorced, and then Mayan and I didn’t talk for a long time,” Lopez said during an appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”
“She went on TikTok to respond to a video that someone made attacking me. It was a video of her twerking upside down,” Lopez continued. “I realized I wasn’t the best dad, but when your kid’s twerking upside down, you’ve got some real f***ing problems. I didn’t realize it was this serious.”
Seeing Mayan twerking made the comedian realize he had to “get out there” and talk to his daughter again, which led to them entering therapy together.
“You have to be responsible for the trauma that you’ve caused,” Lopez continued.
The former “Lopez Tonight” host said it all led to him taking responsibility. “I’m owning, for the first time in my life, my responsibility to the marriage and as a father,” he told Fallon during the appearance. “I said, ‘Yeah, I’m responsible for this, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life repairing it.'”
As for being in therapy, Lopez described it as a difficult but beneficial process.
“If you think therapy is bad, what’s worse is the elevator ride down after because it’s all heavy stuff,” he quipped. “You almost have to stagger it out, like when you dine and dash, somebody goes out the back, somebody goes out the front. Don’t go in the same car when you’re doing trauma therapy.”
The father and daughter duo previously spoke about how the pandemic helped them fix their relationship.
“There was a time where we didn’t speak and were estranged for about three years,” Mayan said during a virtual press conference, according to UPI.
“Really, the pandemic brought us back together. I started making TikToks with my family to reconnect, and [showrunner] Debby Wolfe saw one of [the videos], and this whole ‘Lopez vs. Lopez’ idea was kind of born from that idea. This is an experience of a lifetime to be able to do this with my father.”
Lopez agreed, saying, “To have Debby see Mayan do TikToks about our unfortunate break in our relationship and create a beautiful thing from something that was so painful and so much my fault is just a wonderful thing.”