June 06, (THEWILL) – Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Governor of California, and veteran actor, has recalled how traumatic it was to break the news of fathering a child with their housekeeper to his wife, Maria Shriver.
In the new Netflix docuseries titled: ‘Arnold’, the actor opened up about his Hollywood career, his tenure as California governor, as well as his personal scandals.
Schwarzenegger recalled admitting to his wife and their children that he had an affair with their housekeeper, Mildred Baena and fathered a son, Joseph Baena, with her.
“Maria and I went to counselling once a week and in one of the sessions, the counsellor said, ‘I think today Maria wants to be very specific about something. She wants to know if you are the father of Joseph.’ And I was like, I thought my heart stopped, and then I told the truth.
“Yes, Maria, Joseph is my son,” he recalled telling her.
“She was crushed because of that. I had an affair in 1996. In the beginning, I really didn’t know and then, it was really just a matter of how do you keep this quiet? How do you keep this a secret?”
Schwarzenegger added that the reason he felt reluctant talking about it is because every time he did, it opened up the wounds again.
“I think that I have caused enough pain for my family because of my mistake. Everyone had to suffer. Maria had to suffer. The kids had to suffer. Joseph, his mother. Everyone,” he said in the documentary.
“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, but this is a whole different ball game, a different dimension of failure”, he stated while talking about his scandal.
Schwarzenegger added that his son, Joseph, is a fantastic man, who makes him proud.
“What I did was wrong. 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.”
Schwarzenegger also said he is very happy about how he and Shriver were able to raise the kids really well despite his sad infidelity story.
