Anderson Cooper Says His Mom Wanted to Carry His Child for Him

• Anderson Cooper welcomed his son Wyatt in 2020 via surrogate.
• Gloria Vanderbilt, his mother, visited a doctor in 2009 to determine if she was capable of carrying a child.
• Vanderbilt wanted to carry Cooper’s baby for him, although Cooper said her plan was “nuts.”

Anderson Cooper has revealed that his “nutty” mother, the late fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt, tried to convince him to let her be the surrogate for him and carry his baby.

In an interview with Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show,” Cooper said that when she was 85, 10 years before her death in 2019, Vanderbilt visited a gynaecologist to see if she was still able to carry a child. Cooper worried that Vanderbilt might want to have another child. However, the gynaecologist agreed that she was still able.

However, it turned out that she wanted to have her son’s child.

“Sometimes people wonder how, during interviews, I stay stone-faced and listen to people say bat-s— crazy things — I grew up with Gloria Vanderbilt,” Cooper agreed. “She says to me, ‘Honey, I’m not talking about having a child of my own. I mean, that’s crazy, I’m 85. I was thinking, you get an egg and fertilize it with a sperm, and I’ll carry your child.'”

Anderson said he was “stunned” by his mother’s proposal and told her the idea was “just nuts.”

“That is so weirdly oedipal on a whole new level. That kid would be on the front page of the New York Post for the rest of his life,” Anderson told Colbert.

Vanderbilt refused to let the idea go. Cooper received a clipping from a newspaper two years later about an Italian woman, 65, who had a child for her husband and gay son.

“And my mom has circled it, and then written in a note, ‘See!'” Cooper stated.

Cooper had a child. His mother was not involved. Cooper gave birth to Wyatt Cooper via surrogate on April 20, 2020. Although he and his ex-boyfriend Benjamin Maisani split up in 2018, the pair plan to co-parent Wyatt, who is named after Cooper’s father.

Cooper’s mother died in 2019 after learning that she had “very advanced cancer” in her stomach. Cooper reported the news on CNN.