14 DAY TRIAL // For the first time since the paternity / cheating scandal cost him his marriage to Maria Shriver, Arnold Schwarzenegger is speaking out in an interview with 60 Minutes. Check it out in full below, embedded at the end of this article.
Having already made a career in three different areas, Arnold is now getting ready to get back to acting.
He has a string of new movies coming out but, as expected, he can’t do so without first addressing the cheating scandal that tarnished his reputation as a family man in such a way.
In short, Arnold had an affair with the housekeeper, had a baby with her and then kept the whole thing a secret for at least 7 years, during which time he had them living under the same roof as his family with Maria.
Speaking on 60 Minutes, Arnold candidly admits that he’s “not perfect” and claims that he was sorry each and every time he cheated on Maria, which, as it turns out, was quite a lot.
“No. I had others,” he says when asked whether his fling with Brigitte Nielsen was the only time he cheated on Maria.
“But I mean, ah, but you know, it’s something that’s obviously between Maria and me,” he adds, before saying that, “yeah,” she totally knew about all his infidelities.
It was Maria who confronted his about his illegitimate son with the housekeeper.
“I said, ‘You’re absolutely right, and I am sorry.’ It was very painful for her. She was very disappointed. That I did not know how to [tell her],” he says.
“[I didn’t know] How to tell her without worrying about, you know, that it would get out or whatever,” he adds.
Eventually, it did get out.
Pressed for details on his reasoning for keeping the housekeeper, his lover, inside the house with their illegitimate child, sharing the same space as his other family, Arnold backs out.
“But, look, I have caused enough pain to everyone as it is, if it is my wife or my kids. So I don’t want to reawaken and kind of talk about it because it’s not going to help them. And I just want to protect them as much as I can,” he says.
TMZ reports that Maria is still fuming that Arnold agreed to do the 60 Minutes interview because she sees it as yet another blow to a long series of blows. Moreover, she’s been telling friends that he’s lying through her teeth: she never knew he had cheated on her.