Arnold Schwarzenegger Opens Up About Telling His Ex-Wife Maria Shriver About His Affair And Love Child
Lately, it seems like streaming giants have been handing out auto-biographical docuseries like doctors handing out Ozempic prescriptions- you get one even if you don’t need it! And the latest celeb we can expect to see oversharing on our screens is Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose Netflix docuseries will be dropping tomorrow and will dive into his experiences as a bodybuilder, actor, politician, and most importantly, two-timing cheater- which he gets candid about during his recollection of the moment his ex-wife Maria Shriver found out about his affair and secret love child.
Arnold and Maria announced their split back in May 2011 after she confronted him during their marriage counseling session, asking if Joseph Baena, the child of their family housekeeper Mildred Baena, was his son- since anyone with functioning eyes can see the resemblance cause he’s a mini Arnold. According to him, “I thought my heart stopped.” He confessed,“And then I told the truth. ‘Yes, Maria, Joseph is my son.'” And then, as we know, when Maria was like, “Hasta la vista, baby!” Here are current-day pics of Ahnold and Mildred’s son:
The affair went down in 1996, about 15 years before Maria found out. Arnold admits, in reference to the docuseries, that he’s reluctantly “talking about it is because every time I do it opens up the wounds again.” But as we know from Vanderpump Rules, cheating scandals get views! So of course, he opened up about it, and here’s how he felt about the situation. via Entertainment Weekly:
“I think that I have caused enough pain for my family because of my f—up,” Schwarzenegger said. “Everyone had to suffer. Maria had to suffer. The kids had to suffer. Joseph. His mother. Everyone.”
Schwarzenegger continued: “I am going to have to live with it the rest of my life. 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.”
Schwarzenegger went on to say that his son Joseph is a “fantastic man” who “makes me proud.”
“It was wrong what I did,” the former governor added. “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. I love him and he has turned out to be an extraordinary young man.”
I don’t know if this full admission was written by a PR team or a culmination of years in therapy, but I gotta say… it’s not bad. But speaking of PR answers, Arnold also used his docuseries to address the allegations from several women that he groped them over the decades. Arnold denied the allegations at the time, saying that he “behaved badly sometimes” in the past. Arnold now admits that his response was wrong. via Variety:
“My reaction in the beginning, I was kind of…defensive,” Schwarzenegger now says in the three-part Netflix documentary series. “Today, I can look at it and kind of say, it doesn’t really matter what time it is. If it’s the Muscle Beach days of 40 years ago, or today, that this was wrong. It was bullshit. Forget all the excuses, it was wrong.”
No word yet if this reputation-repairing docuseries also includes Arnold finally apologizing to Miriam Margolyes for farting in her face.
Pic: INSTARImages