Mary-Louise Parker Brings 13-Year-Old Son, William, as Date to ‘When We Rise’ Screening
Hands down, Mary-Louise Parker had the cutest date at Wednesday’s When We Rise screening. That’s because she brought her son.
The Weeds and Fried Green Tomatoes actress, 52, appears in the ABC miniseries, which traces the 50-year history of the gay rights movement, and brought along her 13-year-old son, William Parker, to the Metrograph in New York for the screening. The handsome teen stood proudly by her side on the red carpet, looking stylish in blues and rocking below-the-ears locks.
William seems to be a true combination of his mom and dad — Parker’s ex-boyfriend Billy Crudup — with his mom’s chin and lips and dad’s nose and eyes. We’re not sure where he got his poise, but he looks more pulled together than most 13-year-old boys we know.
Perhaps that’s because he was in the spotlight from a very young age. Well, not his image — his mom has kept him largely out of the spotlight, bringing him along to a few appearances at important projects of hers. But his birth was a bigger deal than many celebrity offspring’s. It obviously wasn’t because he had a crazy name (William Atticus is no Pilot Inspektor, who is the same age), but because his parents split after eight years together — when Parker was 7 months pregnant — and Crudup took up with his Stage Beauty co-star Claire Danes, who was 11 years his junior.
An article from Entertainment Weekly in 2004 details the drama with lines like this: “Mary-Louise Parker is up for a Golden Globe for her role in Angels in America, but her most stunning performance in recent months may have been maintaining a brave face after Big Fish star Billy Crudup terminated their seven-year relationship, reportedly leaving her for Claire Danes, while Parker was seven months pregnant with their child.” And: “Parker banned Crudup from her hospital room but has allowed him to visit his son at her Manhattan home.”
A lot can happen over 13 years, though. Billy has a relationship with his son (who has his first name but Parker’s last). At least that’s what we can glean from Crudup reading William’s poem (about a potato) at the Academy of American Poets’ Poetry & the Creative Mind gala in New York in 2014 or an interview a year later in which Crudup said that his son made fun of his prop beard.
Parker — who went on to adopt daughter Ash, 10, from Ethiopia — sort of addressed the drama but waited until 2015 to do it. That’s the year when her memoir, Dear Mr. You, was released, and it included an essay about a fight she had gotten into with a New York cab driver when she was “pregnant and alone” and it hurt “to even breathe.”
That same year, the other woman, Danes, reflected on the relationship on The Howard Stern Show and was unapologetic. “I was just in love with him,” she said, “and needed to explore that, and I was 24 … I didn’t quite know what those consequences would be.” (They split four years later, and she began dating Hugh Dancy, whom she later married.)
Parker, who went on to be engaged briefly to Jeffrey Dean Morgan, stars in When We Rise, which is a look at the struggles and triumphs of LGBTQ people throughout history. She plays Roma Guy, a women’s rights activist, which she talks about in detail here:
And if you want to hear her talk more about her life with her kids, don’t miss this interview from The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Parker details how they make syrup together on her upstate New York farm — the kids are even on the label — and shares silly mishaps they’ve had with their farm animals:
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