Anderson Cooper's Mother Lobbied to Be His Surrogate

Picturing the tabloid headlines, the CNN anchor declined Gloria Vanderbilt's offer
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 25, 2021 5:20 PM CDT
Anderson Cooper's Mother Lobbied to Be His Surrogate
FILE - In this April 4, 2016 file photo, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt attend the premiere of "Nothing Left Unsaid" at the Time Warner Center in New York. Vanderbilt, the "poor little rich girl" heiress at the center of a scandalous custody battle of the 1930s and the designer jeans...   (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)

Anderson Cooper interviews people for a living, and he says he's used to keeping a straight face when they say crazy things. Plus, he points out, "I grew up with Gloria Vanderbilt." But Vanderbilt threw her son for a loop with an idea she had when she was 85, Yahoo Entertainment reports. Knowing Cooper wanted a child, she suggested: "You get an egg and, you know, fertilize it with your sperm, and I'll carry your child.'" She'd just been to her gynecologist, she said, and been assured she could still bear children. "I was just stunned," Cooper said.

A lifetime of tabloid headlines flashed through his mind, the CNN anchor said Thursday on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. He told her, "You know, Mom, I love you, but even for you that is just batsh*t crazy. That's just nuts.’" Cooper described the idea as "just weirdly Oedipal on a whole other level." In the end, Cooper did have a son, Wyatt Morgan, delivered by a surrogate in April 2020. He co-parents with an ex, Benjamin Maisani, per Page Six.

Vanderbilt didn't let go of the idea easily. Two years after first making the offer, she sent her son a newspaper clipping with the headline, "Grandmother Bears Child for Son." There was a photo of the grandmother, "in the labor room in the stirrups," Cooper said. "And my mom has circled it and written in a note, 'See!'" Gloria Vanderbilt, an heiress who made her mark in several fields, died in 2019 at age 95. (More Anderson Cooper stories.)

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