After learning that her dad was a ladies’ man who fathered 26 children outside of her Jennifer Hudson opened up about her desire to come face to face with them all.
During the finale episode of Audible Originals’ podcast Your Mama’s Kitchen hosted by journalist Michele Norris, the EGOT winner opened up about her family, according to People. Something she got candid about was the time she learned about her many siblings on her father’s side after finding him when she was 16 years old.
“Your father had a big personality,” Norris told Hudson. “And you went with your siblings and went and found him at some point and found that you had a lot more siblings?”
“Yes, a lot of us. Apparently he had 27 children,” she responded.
The revelation ignited Hudson’s curiosity as she wanted to also find where her potential brothers and sisters lived.
“It was my dream to have all of us at this grand Thanksgiving or Christmas table, and we all sit and eat together — that was my goal at 16,” the Dreamgirls actor shared.
Although Hudson hasn’t accomplished her goal yet, she and the siblings she grew up with, Jason, and Julia, made contact with and met six or seven of their relatives in person.
“We found quite a few of us,” she said. “And I’m the youngest of all of them.”
This was made possible with the help of her father’s family, who didn’t hesitate to help connect the talk show host with her long-lost siblings.
“When my grandma on his side passed, my siblings over there were like, ‘Y’all got a sister that can really sing, you should meet her,'” she said. “And eventually we all came together.”
As the mother of a 14-year-old son, who Hudson shares with ex-fiancé David Otunga, it’s important to her that he gets to experience the love and joy family brings.
“I love to try to make sure he has the closest thing to him… just making sure he has his cousins circle and that base and foundation,” she said. “That’s part of why I had moved back to Chicago, because I wanted him to have the surroundings of his family around him growing up.”
Since she and her son don’t live close to their family, Hudson is all about quality time.
“Now we’re here in L.A. and so we make a point to like, have our Sunday dinners. That’s one thing that’s very important,” she said. “And then he has cousins that come in and out. One of them is here right now. And so to keep that family burning… So he has that same upbringing or going to see the loved ones I talked to.”
Hudson added, “We have a huge family. People like the fact that y’all are this close and your family is this big. Like, all of us are still very connected.”
