Anderson Cooper is the first to admit his late mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, was “kind of nutty” — and he’s got the story to prove it.
While appearing on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” Thursday night, Cooper opened up for the first time about how his mother, who died in July 2019 at age 95, once offered to carry a baby for him. It all started when Vanderbilt, then 85, told Cooper about a visit to her gynecologist.
“She told me the most amazing thing. She told me I could still bear a child,” the CNN anchor recalled his mom telling him.
At first, Cooper, who was not yet a parent at the time, thought his mom wanted to try to get pregnant again. But Vanderbilt had another idea in mind.
“She’s like, ‘Well, you know, you can get an egg anywhere these days.’ I was like, ‘Uh huh.’ She was like, ‘Well, what I was thinking is, you get an egg and, you know, fertilize it with your sperm, and I’ll carry your child,’” Cooper said, as Colbert looked on in utter disbelief.
“I was just stunned,” the CNN anchor continued. “And I finally said to her, I was like, ‘You know, mom, I love you, but even for you that is just bats— crazy. That’s just nuts.’ I was like, ‘That is just weirdly Oedipal on a whole other level. That kid would be on the front page of the New York Post for the rest of its life.’”
Vanderbilt didn’t give up on the idea, either. According to Cooper, she was still pushing the idea years later.
“Fast forward two years later, I get a thing in the mail that my mom has sent me, ’cause that’s how we communicated,” Cooper said. “And it’s a newspaper clipping, and it’s a photograph, the headline is, ‘Grandmother bears child for son.’ And my mom has circled it and then written in a note, ‘See!’”
Thankfully, it all worked out for Cooper — he and his ex Benjamin Maisani are now co-parenting their 1-year-old son, Wyatt, whom they welcomed via surrogate in 2020.
See Cooper tell the full story in the “Late Show” clip up top.