Nick Cannon wants to set the record straight when it comes to his most recent headline-grabbing role: father of 12 children.
In a May 7 profile for the Los Angeles TimesThe “Drumline” actor, comedian and TV host set out to debunk narratives that he is a “slacker dad” trying to launch a cult following.
Cannon has 11 living children with six different women: Brittany Bell, Alyssa Scott, Abby De La Rosa, Bre Tiesi, LaNisha Cole, and his ex-wife Mariah Carey. In 2021, Cannon and Scott announced that their son Zen died at five months of cancer.
“They have made a villain out of me,” Cannon said of the conversation surrounding his many children in the Los Angeles Times interview. “I hear all the time: ‘You can’t be there for all those kids.’ So, therefore, I got this lazy parent title.”
During her conversation with the newspaper, Cannon admitted to having multiple romantic partners and not believing in monogamy. She was also upfront about what it takes to feed the many mouths she helped shape.
Cannon said he currently earns $100 million a year. To do this, the actor says that he has many concerts at once, including hosting the shows «The Masked Singer», «Wild ‘N Out», «Beat Shazam» and «Celebrity Prank Wars».
Canon also recently wrapped filming on the first season of an Amazon Freevee show called «Counsel Culture,» intended to be an all-male version of «The View,» the Los Angeles Times reports. He hosts the live morning radio show «The Daily Cannon» as well as the «#2HateorNot2Hate» podcast. He said he’s also writing «a ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ urban novel.» In the fall, his show “Future Superstar Tour” will premiere, and a movie he recently finished shooting with Alec Baldwin titled “Hollywood Heist” will be released, but it doesn’t have a release date yet.
Cannon admitted that these jobs, along with her many children, can mean she often falls short when it comes to her ability to bond with them in a meaningful way. Even so, she assures that spending time with each of her children and always being present is her priority.
“It’s not about what I do for you or what I say to you, it’s about how you feel when I’m with you,” she said of working to be truly present with her children whenever she can spend time with them. «If you feel loved when you see your dad, that’s what’s going to resonate.»
“Right now, the narrative is, ‘He has a bunch of kids,’” the TV host said of himself. “But I’m really in a place now where I don’t care what people know. I prefer to have surgery. It’s more about actually being a good person rather than telling people you’re a good person.»
Last February, Cannon told Entertainment Tonight that he felt ready to stop having children: “God decides when we’re done, but I think I definitely have my hands full and I’m very focused. I’m locked. But when I’m 85, you never know. I could.»
Still, as the Los Angeles Times puts it, Cannon’s «people-pleasing» tendencies have been the trait that got him down the path of fathering so many children in the first place. According to Cannon, many of the women he co-parents with are in the «same age group» and, for a time, expressed the same concerns about missing out on the opportunity to have children because of their body clocks.
“Many of them are in the same age group,” he explained. “And I just wanted to give them what they wanted. She kept saying, ‘I can handle it.’”