Wynonna Judd offered insight into where her relationship with sister Ashley Judd stands now.
“Ashley’s doing well. I don’t see her very much and we’re not as close as I’d like to be but that’s because success took us away from each other,” Wynonna, 60, told country music star Clint Black in an interview released on Friday, May 23. “It’s a funny thing. There’s a bit of a sadness, because being famous takes you from home.”
Wynonna further discussed how Ashley, 57, calls her “sister mommy” because of their dynamic.
“I raised Ashley. That’s why we have such a funny relationship,” she added. “I’m a little bit sad about that because I didn’t get to be her sister. It was just the two of us trying to survive.”
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Black, 63, asked Wynonna if she could “still ground” Ashley.
“I try. I’m bigger and meaner than her, because I had to be,” Wynonna admitted. “I had to be mean because I had to keep it together. When you’re 14 years old and your mom is working all the time and you learn to drive, I was responsible for a lot and she put me in charge. That’s just the way it was.”
She added, “We made it and it’s a miracle that we’re all still able to do what it is we love.”
Wynonna’s interview comes weeks after she discussed the ins and outs of her famous family in Lifetime’s docuseries The Judd Family: Truth Be Told, which was released on May 10.
Wynonna and her late mother, Naomi Judd, were known as the country music duo The Judds from 1983 to 1991. Ashley had a successful acting career but never entered the music industry.
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“Of course, in my own way, I was a part of everything. Because I was deeply affected by everything, but I wasn’t interested in being a part of the singing,” she explained in the docuseries. “I mean, I had a fiddle and there’s a picture of me on that fiddle, and I look as miserable as it sounded.”
Wynonna also unpacked the unique relationship she had with her sister.
“I find myself going back to those memories of Mom having me do dishes and make the bed or fixing Ashley something to eat,” she recalled. “I was not allowed to be a child because I was always doing something. I was really the adult. I was the spouse, if that makes sense. And once Mom cried because Ashley said, ‘I feel like Wynonna’s my mother.’”
