Billy Crudup and ex Mary-Louise Parker are all about supporting their son, William.
Crudup, 57, made a rare comment about his former flame while gushing about their 21-year-old child during an interview with The Times published on Thursday, November 27.
“Well, without commenting on any of our … Our adoration for our son is boundless,” the Morning Show star said when asked if he and Parker, 61, are on better terms following their 2003 split.
Crudup added of William, who is an actor, writer and director, “He has, through the mash-up of the two of us, been endowed with superpowers for theatricality. He’s such a badass. Mary-Louise and I appeared in most of his films.”
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Crudup and Parker began dating in 1996 after they met while costarring in the Broadway play Bus Stop. The Weeds actress was seven months pregnant with William in 2003 when the Almost Famous star left her to pursue a relationship with Claire Danes, whom Crudup met while filming the movie Stage Beauty.
Parker gave birth to William in January 2004. Crudup and Danes, 46, went public with their romance that same year, although they later split in 2007.
Crudup has never publicly spoken about the details surrounding his split from Parker. In an October 2004 profile for the New York Times, he wrote to reporter Jesse Green via email, “I just want to make an argument for not including anything about the Mary-Louise Parker situation. First and foremost, it is personal, painful and involves an infant, and does not deserve to be exploited to sate the appetites of circulation counters and bored readers.”
Crudup continued, “I have never indulged our society’s misguided notion that my personal life is relevant to my work, so any reporting surrounding that is necessarily hearsay, speculation or fantasy. Each published report is based only on the trade of suffering.”
Crudup briefly commented on the breakup in a 2017 interview with The Times, saying, “You have to live with the mistakes that you make.” He also shared why he never wanted to open up about the situation.
“There are other people involved. Why get into a public discourse when you’re still trying to work it out?” he told the outlet.
Like Crudup, Parker has remained tight-lipped about what happened between them. However, she alluded to the split in her 2015 memoir, Dear Mr. You.
“I am alone. Look, see? I am pregnant and alone. It hurts to even breathe,” Parker wrote in a letter to the New York City cab driver who got lost while driving her to a doctor’s appointment.
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Danes briefly opened up about her relationship with Crudup in a 2009 interview with Blackbook.
“That was a choice I made to fall in love,” she said. “It’s unpleasant to be cast in such an unflattering role [in the tabloids], but I just had to remain steadfast. I was living with the same kind of integrity that I had always lived with.”
Following his split from Danes, Crudup moved on with Naomi Watts, whom he met in 2017 while filming Gypsy. The pair tied the knot in New York City in June 2023 and had a second ceremony in Mexico surrounded by family the following year. Meanwhile, Danes married husband Hugh Dancy in 2009, and they went on to welcome three children.
Parker adopted daughter Ash, 18, from Ethiopia in 2007.
