(CNN) — It sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger struggled to tell his then wife Maria Shriver about his secret son with their housekeeper Mildred Baena.
According to The Sun, Schwarzenegger revealed how the bombshell came out that Joseph Baena, now 25, was his son.
The publication reports the “Terminator” star shares the story in his forthcoming, three-part Netflix docuseries about how he and Shriver had been in marriage counseling during his time as Governor of California.
“One day, the counselor said, ‘Today Maria wants to be very specific about something,’” Schwarzenegger reportedly says. “‘She wants to know if you’re the father of Joseph’. I thought my heart stopped. And then I told the truth. ‘Yes, Maria. Joseph is my son’. She was obviously crushed by that.”
The couple had married in 1986 and are the parents of four children. The affair with Mildred Baena happened in 1996.
Schwarzenegger said he and Baena believed she was pregnant by her husband, but he began to suspect otherwise as John grew older.
“In the beginning I really didn’t know, but the older he got, the more it became clear to me,” Schwarzenegger said. “It was then just a matter of, ‘How do you keep this quiet?’”
CNN has reached out to reps for Schwarzenegger and Shriver for comment.
“Arnold” premieres Wednesday on Netflix. His series “Fubar” is currently streaming on Netflix.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.