Brooke Shields Talks About Her Daughters’ Reactions To Her Documentary: One Approves, One Doesn’t
Brooke Shields is getting real about how her daughters reacted to Pretty Baby, the documentary about her life. The actress, now 58, opened up on Jennie Garth’s podcast, I Choose Me, where she shared the very different reactions her daughters had to the film.
The documentary, which came out last year, dives into Brooke’s experiences growing up in the spotlight and the larger conversation around the sexualization of young women in society.
In Brooke’s words, the documentary stood as “a larger conversation about the sexualization of young women, especially in our society, and it just broadened the view of one person’s story.”
Brooke was ready to share her journey, her daughters had mixed feelings about it. Grier, her 18-year-old, wasn’t thrilled at all. “She’ll forever be angry with me,” Brooke admitted.
The actress also admitted that she made “a bad mom move” by failing to prepare her daughter, who felt “ambushed with the information.”
“I didn’t set her up, and she doesn’t like being surprised. She felt sort of cold-cocked. I assumed it would be fine. I thought, well, ‘She knows her mother. Her mother’s healthy and not damaged.’ I thought she would be able to look at us now and think, like, ‘Wow, you’ve come a long way’, and ‘Isn’t that great?'” she added.
In contrast, her older daughter, Rowan, 20, took a more mature view of the documentary. While it was hard for her to watch, Rowan understood the importance of the story. “My older daughter really thought about it and said, ‘It was tough. I don’t need to see that again, but women need to see this,’” Brooke shared.
Brooke admitted that while Rowan could understand the film’s purpose, she isn’t sure when Grier will come around to accepting it. “I’m not sure where my 18-year-old is gonna get any better. I don’t know if she’s going to,” she added.
In a previous interview with PEOPLE, the mom of two talked about how the documentary also uncovered some things that her daughters hadn’t fully known about. While Rowan was more aware of what her mom had been through, Grier was not. Grier admitted to PEOPLE that it hit her hard: “I was learning about things at the same time as the world was, and I just took it more deeply and personally. I couldn’t even get through it.”
Brooke knows it’s tough for her daughters to see everything she went through, but she remains proud of the documentary’s impact. “And I was the conduit to a bigger conversation. And that, to me, is the biggest gift of all,” she stated.
