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Anderson Cooper tells 'batsh*t crazy' story of his 85-year-old mom offering to carry his child

Stephen Proctor
·3 min read

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper joined The Late Show With Stephen Colbert Thursday, where he spoke about his mother Gloria Vanderbilt, who died at the age of 95 in July of 2019. Cooper talked about his mother’s eccentricities, and told for the first time on television, a wild idea that she had at the age of 85.

Cooper said that she had called him, saying she really needed to talk to him about something. He went through different scenarios of what it might be on the way to her place, but wasn’t even close to prepared for what the purpose of the visit turned out to be. When Cooper arrived, his mother informed him that she’d been to the gynecologist the previous week, which “wasn’t that unusual for her to start a sentence like that,” but that was just the beginning. She informed Cooper that the gynecologist told her she could still bear a child. At first, Cooper thought his mother wanted to try to get pregnant again, but that wasn’t the case.

Before getting into what his mother had in mind, he said, “You know, sometimes people wonder how during interviews I just stay, like, stone faced and listen to people say batsh*t crazy things. I grew up with Gloria Vanderbilt.”

That kid would be on the front page of the New York Post for the rest of its life.Anderson Cooper

Cooper began to try to talk his mother out of it when she revealed the reason she wanted to talk to him.

Cooper explained, “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, who is now co-parenting his son Wyatt with his ex Benjamin Maisani, was obviously blown away by his mother’s offer.

“I was just stunned,” Cooper said, “and I finally said to her, I was like, ‘You know, mom, I love you, but even for you that is just batsh*t 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.’”

But his mother, whose advice Cooper lovingly described recently as ludicrous at times, was still pushing the subject two 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.’”

Cooper said in the photo, the son and his partner were watching the birth of their child. He said his mother circled it, with the note, “See!”

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on CBS.

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