Heavy The "Dancing With the Stars" contestant gave fans an upfate.
A “Dancing With the Stars” alum reunited with her dad after a three-year estrangement.
In a July 2023 interview, DWTS season 2 alum Tatum O’Neal gave fans an update on her rocky relationship with her father, actor Ryan O’Neal, and admitted that even though she recently saw him in person, she is still unsure where their relationship stands.
Here’s what you need to know:
Tatum O’Neal Said She Missed Her Father “Terribly”
Tatum O’Neal, 59, spoke out about her relationship with her dad in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, where she revealed that she made plans to visit her father at his Malibu home after not seeing him since September 2020. At the time she last saw her dad, Tatum had been recovering from a stroke spawned by a near-fatal prescription drug overdose and could not speak, but her three kids Sean, Kevin, and Emily McEnroe were all with her, per CNN.
In the 2023 interview, Tatum explained that her love-hate relationship with her father began when she was a child after she won an Academy Award for the 1974 film “Paper Moon” and he didn’t. Drug addiction also affected the famous family’s relationships over the years.
“Weird s*** happened. It kind of went in the wrong direction to happiness,” Tatum told THR.
Ahead of their reunion, Tatum told the outlet she just wanted to have a “conversation” with her dad, who is now 82, and that she hoped it would “work out.” “He’s an amazing man, my dad, and I miss him terribly,” she added. “I mean, I’ve had a hard life with my dad — but I still love him.”
The actress later gave an update, saying that the reunion went “well,” but that her father didn’t respond to later messages from her.
“[He didn’t say] a lot,” she told THR. “But there was happiness. …But then when I tried to text him two days ago to see if I could go back, he didn’t call me back. So then it gets a little weird, unfortunately.”
Tatum & Ryan O’ Neal’s Estrangement Once Led to a Weird Interaction
In the early 2000s, Ryan O’Neal had been estranged from Tatum for so long that after the 2009 funeral of his late girlfriend, Farrah Fawcett, he didn’t recognize his daughter and actually tried to hit on her.
“I had just put the casket in the hearse and I was watching it drive away when a beautiful blonde woman comes up and embraces me,” Ryan later told Variety, per Us Weekly. “I said to her, ‘You have a drink on you? You have a car?’ She said, ‘Daddy, it’s me—Tatum!’”
Ryan explained that he was “just trying to be funny” with a strange woman. “And it’s my daughter. It’s so sick,” he added.
Tatum responded to the story, telling Variety, “That’s our relationship in a nutshell. You make of it what you will. It had been a few years since we’d seen each other, and he was always a ladies’ man, a bon vivant.”
Tatum elaborated on the confusion in a 2011 interview with The Daily Beast, where she revealed her father had mistakenly flirted with her once before.
“My father doesn’t really remember what I look like,” she said. “He sees blond hair, a black dress, and to him, that’s just a chick. A girl. He didn’t know it was me, so he kind of swooped in, and I had to remind him he was 70, and I was his daughter.”
Tatum also revealed that was “the second time that’s happened” to her with her dad. “But you know, he lives in another world,” she said.
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