Jerry O’Connell turned into an overzealous stage dad when he learned his 7-year-old twin daughters’ school would be putting on a production of High School Musical.
“One [of my girls] is very into it and got ready for the audition, and the other one wouldn’t audition,” the dad of Dolly and Charlie told Us Weekly on March 2 at the launch of JCPenney’s “Get Your Penney’s Worth” campaign in L.A. “I couldn’t believe what a stage parent I turned into. I was trying to make her go and audition.”
That’s when Dolly and Charlie’s mom, Rebecca Romijn, intervened.
“My wife got really upset with me and said, ‘You can’t make them do these things if they don’t want to do them,” the Mistresses actor, 42, told Us. “For some reason I thought my kids were like the Olsen twins. I was like, ‘You gotta get out there. You have to audition.’ And my kid just didn’t want to do it.”
The former child actor added: “I think everybody gets a role. So one of them is going to be in it, and the other one I think will be a tree or something!”
Though Romijn wasn’t at the event, the actress, 43, was on O’Connell’s mind.
“This is so shallow … but my wife now, with two 7-year-old twin girls and nine years into marriage, looks better than I’ve ever seen her,” he gushed. “It’s a lot of Pilates. My wife really eats well, and is really good about getting me to eat well, and our kids to eat well. … She makes our kids eat eggs before they go to school in the morning, makes them, stands over them. My parents, I love them, but they threw a box of sugary cereal at my brother and I.”
