NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Anderson Cooper revealed that his mother Gloria Vanderbilt had offered to be a surrogate for his son in an interview with the Times of London. Gloria was 85 years old when she made the offer and died soon after in 2019.
"I was like, 'Mom, that is the craziest, most Oedipal weird thing," recalled the CNN anchor. "Please! Even for you, Mom, that's f**ked up. We would have been on the cover of the New York Post for the next 18 years. Are you kidding me?"
He did not elaborate on whether his mother was joking or sincere about the offer.
Anderson Cooper's mother Gloria Vanderbilt encouraged him to have children
Gloria was a descendant of New York's most influential family, the Vanderbilts. In 1963, she married Wyatt Cooper, this being her fourth marriage. The pair had two sons, Carter and Anderson.
Anderson Cooper lost his father to heart problems when he was 10. In 1988. at the age of 23, Carter jumped off the balcony of Gloria's house to kill himself.
Cooper recalled how his brother's death haunted his mother until her death.
When Cooper turned 40, he felt ready to become a father but was afraid of history repeating itself.
"I was convinced I would die at 50. My dad died at 50, and his dad died at 50. I was like, 'Well, if I die at 50, which I'm pretty sure I'm going to, that means the kids will be 10 when I die'. Which was the age I was when my dad died."
Gloria always encouraged him to go for it, and it was at the age of 51 when Cooper finally let go of his fear.
Anderson Cooper's relationship with his nanny
Gloria had been very supportive of Cooper but he credits his childhood nanny, a Scottish woman named May McLinden, as the one he could depend on most after his dad died.
"May, in many ways, was my mother and was the most important. Was right up there with my mom and dad in terms of importance in my life," said Cooper.
This equation was disliked by Gloria, who fired May to separate her from her son.
"My mom was hurt by the closeness of my relationship with May and one day she fired her without any warning. I came home and May was packing her things, trying not to cry in front of me… There was nothing she or I could do," he recalled.
Cooper was not separated from May for long and took trips with her to Los Angeles and Rome. Unfortunately, May began to suffer from dementia by the time Cooper could buy a house. He talked about how she thought she was looking after a child when in reality she had a ceramic dog that she mistook for him.
Cooper explained her condition, recalling, "The dog was a present I'd given her for her birthday when I was maybe 12 years old. The dog she was holding, the one she thought was a child. She thought it was me," Cooper said on his podcast.
Cooper flew May to Scotland to place her in a nursing home when her condition worsened. She died there in 2014.
Cooper revealed that it is May that he thinks about most while raising his children.
Who are Anderson Cooper's children?
After declining his mother's offer, Cooper and his then-partner Benjamin Maisani found a surrogate who was a young, married woman with children of her own.
The journalist announced the birth of his first son, Wyatt, in April 2020, less than a year after his mother died.
Cooper had another son named Sebastian in February 2022. The former couple co-parent both kids at Cooper's old fire station house in New York.
