Four years after Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted to fathering a love child with his family's former housekeeper Mildred Baena, he has opened up about his secret son. The Terminator star described 17-year-old Joseph Baena as "fantastic" in an interview with SiriusXM host Howard Stern on Wednesday.
"He's terrific and he totally understands the situation. So, it all has worked out… It's a very tough situation for him. It’s a very tough situation for my kids, very tough situation for my family," Arnold said. "It was tough for everybody. But it has happened and now we have to figure it out, right?"
The revelation led to the breakdown of Arnold's 25-year marriage to wife Maria Shriver, something he deems one of the biggest failures of his life.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has opened up about his son Joseph Baena
"Without any doubt. Not only failure, but you feel like, 'I'm to blame for it. It was me that screwed up,'" Arnold said, adding that trying therapy with his wife was another mistake following their split in 2011.
"He said more c**p and more nonsense. It was absolutely counterproductive to our future relationship… I don't have to go through anyone to have to explain to me anything… I apologised to Maria. I apologised to the kids," he added.
The former couple have four children together; Katherine, 25, Christina, 23, Patrick, 21 and Christopher, 17.
Arnold fathered his son Joseph with the family's housekeeper Mildred Baena
Photo: © David Schumacher
Arnold's oldest son Patrick recently went through a break-up of his own following his split from singer Miley Cyrus, but Arnold insisted there were no hard feelings between the pair.
"Under normal circumstances maybe I would be nervous, but I'll tell you the two reasons why not," Arnold confided. "One is my kids are very strong. They have had their upbringing. They know exactly how far they can go and they should be adventurous, they should venture out and meet different people, so I was not worried about that.
"The other thing is when I did meet Miley Cyrus, when she came up to Sun Valley skiing during the holidays, I found out that she was a fantastic person."
He added: "She has this career side where she has to be a little bit out there and maybe is a little bit different because she grew up in a music family. So what? It didn't bother me. I think Patrick had a wonderful experience, he had a great relationship and then the whole thing eventually fell apart."
