Chynna Phillips is opening up about the intense conversation she had with her late dad, The Mamas & the Papas singer John Phillips, on the eve of her 1995 wedding to Billy Baldwin.
“We talked about stuff that was pretty earth-shattering and a lot had come to the surface and my father was having a ton of feelings and, of course, that made me have a ton of feelings and I remember I was up all night just weeping and numb,” Chynna, 56, revealed during a a video titled “My Wedding Night Nightmare” uploaded to her YouTube Channel on Wednesday, February 14.
She continued: “I would weep and then I would go stoic again and then I would weep and then I would go stoic again, and it was because my father had just revealed some really big information to me and I just felt blindsided by it.”
While the Wilson Phillips singer did not reveal the nature of her father’s confession, she hinted that it had something to do with her mother, Michelle Phillips, to whom John was married from 1962 to 1969.
“I don’t think it was any coincidence that he was walking me down the aisle with my mother, and I think he felt like he needed to come clean before he walked me down the aisle for his own conscience,” she explained. “I felt that he felt that he needed to do that just so that it was genuine.”
Chynna admitted that she was on “autopilot” during her wedding as a result of the heavy discussion, but defended her dad’s intentions.
“I know it sounds horrible that my dad would do that to me on the night before my wedding, but he didn’t intend to do that, it was more like it just evolved in our conversation the night before I got married,” she said. “It was one of the most priceless conversations I’d ever had with my father and it was definitely, bar none, the most honest conversation I’d had with my father, and the most raw and real conversation I’d ever had with my dad.”
Chynna previously spoke about her complicated feelings toward her father during a December 2023 YouTube video conversation with sister Mackenzie Phillips.
“Obviously, he’s an amazing songwriter and, you know I loved his laugh, and yet there was this whole other side to dad that was, I mean, kind of, like a monster,” Chynna said of John, who died at age 65 in 2001. “He was so dark, and you just didn’t know who you were going to get. It was very unpredictable.”
Mackenzie, 64, claimed in her 2009 memoir, High on Arrival, that she had a 10-year consensual incestuous relationship with John after he allegedly raped her when she was 19. She noted in the YouTube chat that she felt “at peace” despite her “very complicated” history with her dad.
“I get a lot of criticism and a lot of trolling online for having forgiveness in my heart,” the One Day at a Time actress said. “Forgiveness, because forgiving is for me, not for the other person. And forgiving doesn’t mean I cosign or agree with what I’m forgiving him for.”
Chynna shared her own thoughts on forgiving John while discussing her wedding on Friday.
“It’s easy to say, ‘I forgive you,’… but the truth is that forgiveness takes time, it’s a process,” she said. “It’s hard for me to dissect it and to say like ‘OK, well, what am I forgiving him for? For what he did? The addiction? Abandoning me? Am I forgiving him for using me as a pawn, for all the things I saw that I never should have seen as a child?’”
Chynna concluded that rather than focusing on forgiving her father specifically, she’d decided, “OK, I’m just going to have to forgive in general. I’m just going to have to forgive all around.”
