There’s nothing as strong as a mother-daughter bond — and Laura Dern’s relationship with her mom, Diane Ladd, only grew deeper following a major health scare.
During a Tuesday, April 25, appearance on Today, the Jurassic Park star, 56, recalled when her mother was told she only had six months to live in 2019.
“She was exposed to pesticides being sprayed in the neighborhood and was not notified and realized that she had scarring on her lungs,” Dern explained to host Hoda Kotb. “And they said, ‘If you can get her walking, expand her lung capacity, maybe it will help.’”
The emotional conversations that followed inspired the two of them to pen their new book, Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding).
During those walks, the Little Women star also got the idea to record her conversations with her mother so that her kids Ellery, 21, and Jaya, 18 — who she shares ex-husband Ben Harper — would be able to listen back to them.
“I was shocked at how little I’d asked her,” Dern recalled. “The hard stuff, because I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t want to bring it up and hurt her.’ But even the simple stuff. I’ve been raised by an actor, I’ve worked alongside my mother, and yet I’d never asked, ‘Why did you want to become an actress? … What was the first movie that ever inspired you? What’s your favorite color?’”
Talking about everything from the months-old baby Ladd lost in the past to the overall subject of death — which Dern says her mom brought up on their first walk together — helped both of them heal “physically and emotionally,” something they hope their book will do for others.
“It was the beginning of 2019 that we started these walks, and they said, ‘Your mother will never be here in six months,’” the Oscar winner stated on the NBC morning show. “But from walking and not believing, as my mom said to [Kotb], ‘They say they’re practicing medicine, so I’m not going to believe one doctor, I’m going to go to several, and I’m going to keep fighting with alternative modalities and my daughter and I’s love for each other.’”
As Dern went on to note, Ladd — who has scored three Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress over the years — has “made two movies, [done] a TV show and wrote a book” in the four years since her health scare, including projects such as Young Sheldon, Chesapeake Shores, Gigi & Nate and Isle of Hope.
She continued: “As we started sharing with people that we were doing this, we saw that siblings and mother and fathers and sons and daughters, they were all having conversations they’d never had. And we thought if this can inspire friends, we hope it will inspire others, too, so that’s why we’re sharing.”
While the actress is often sharing pics of her mom and kids via Instagram, she recently supported a member of her “found family,” Taylor Swift, at the opening night of the singer’s “The Eras Tour” in Glendale, Arizona. The importance of female friendships is something Dern said she learned from Ladd.
“I think part of embracing the sisterhood of found family was because my mom — also an only child — founder her ‘sisters,’ her connection with the women she worked with and found in this lifetime,” the Big Little Lies alum told Kotb, 58. “And so, that’s been an amazing thing.”
