Maya Rudolph done reminiscing about the past. In an interview for her Diversity cover story, six-time Emmy winner and Saturday Night Live The all-timer shared that she no longer enjoys discussing the death of her mother, singer-songwriter Minnie Riperton, in interviews: “Why are we still doing this?”
Born in 1972, Rudolph is the daughter of musician Richard Rudolph and the iconic singer of “Lovin’ You.” Riperton was just 31 when she died of breast cancer in 1979. In the interview, Rudolph revealed that she recently realized that she no longer wanted to share her mother’s death when talking about her career with the press.
“Throughout my career, people have always mentioned my mother, which is amazing,” she said. Diversity. “But then they also mentioned the pain of losing my mother when I was young. And they asked me how old I was when she died.”
The Spoils of War star pointed out that the details surrounding her mother’s death are available to anyone familiar with her or her work. “First of all, if you know me and you know who I am, you already have that information,” she said. “And second of all, who wants to be asked about their childhood trauma every time they talk about their career? I’m 52 years old and I survived my childhood trauma.”
Rudolph recently won his sixth Emmy for voicing hormone monster Connie in Netflix’s animated comedy Wide mouth. She was also nominated for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Molly Novak, the billionaire ex-wife of a tech mogul, in the Apple TV+ series. Spoils of war. Produced in the third season of Spoils of War was pushed back so that Rudolph could return. SNL Music Night in some capacity this fall to portray the Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris during the election cycle. She is also the mother of four children—Pearl, Lucille, Jack, And Minnie, named after her mother—whom she shares with her longtime partner, director Who is Paul Thomas Anderson?
Clearly, Rudolph has a lot going on beyond her childhood trauma. Still, she finds herself talking about losing her mother in interviews. “I answer the question and then I’m like, Why am I doing this again?” she says. “Maybe this is the day where we just say, ‘You can stop asking.’ It just makes for a sad story. But we’re talking about great things, yeah, and humans are capable of more than one thing. But for some reason, people really want to focus on the sadness, and I’m like, I’m okay.”
