In the opening moments of his new Hulu reality series, “Wayne Brady: The Family Remix,” Wayne Brady says that he and his family “are giving you no-holds-barred realness.”
After watching the first episode, he’s not wrong.
Brady and his family give viewers love, chaos, performance, drama … and honesty.
“I’m doing this show because I want to be happy. And my family’s taking that journey with me,” he says in a confessional.
Brady’s self-described “nontraditional family” includes:
- Mandie Taketa, who introduces herself as Brady’s business partner, best friend and ex-wife
- Jason Michael Fordham, Taketa’s “life partner,” who just so happened to have been a dancer in Brady’s Vegas show (“It’s weird,” Brady said. “That part, it’s weird.”)
- Maile Masako Brady, the 21-year-old daugher of Brady and Taketa, who attends Loyola Marymount University and is an actor, dancer and singer. (“She is me 2.0,” said Brady. “I’m a nepo baby,” she said later.)
- Sunny, the young son of Taketa and Fordham, who looks up to Brady as a “duncle” (dad/uncle)
Brady shared a number of personal details in the series premiere, beginning with his romantic life.
“ I identify as pansexual,” Brady explained in a filmed interview for the show. “I have been attracted to men, I’m very much attracted to women and anyone who falls within the non-gender-conforming spectrum. I am open to love and attraction from anyone in that group.”
But that’s not all.
“There are things I’ve never told anybody outside of this immediate family,” he said slowly. “I happen to have a 6-month-old son named Val Henry that I recently just had with my ex-girlfriend Tina.”
Brady dated Tina periodically “during the pandemic” and then they went their separate ways. They reunited briefly after the passing of the woman who Brady called “Mom,” his grandmother, Valerie Petersen. His son’s name might be a nod to Petersen.
“When I first found out Tina was pregnant … Wow. I was floored,” Brady said. “It was not on my bingo card to be a 51-year-old dad.”
Initially, Brady was too shocked by the news to feel happy. He enlisted his ex-wife to help him figure out how to co-parent with his ex-girlfriend.
“This is like an opportunity for you to kind of look back at all the things that we did wrong with Maile,” Taketa told him on the show. “You have an opportunity to do it differently this time.”
“Saying out loud some of the truths that I have, it’s very scary,” Brady says in a confessional. “I have a lot to lose. I have a reputation. I have my family’s income. All of these things could go away tomorrow.”
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