Jon & Kate Plus 8’s Jon Gosselin is opening up about where he stands with his estranged children.
“I haven’t talked to them. I mean, I know Hannah [Gosselin] has,” Jon, 49, told Entertainment Tonight in an interview published on Friday, October 23, referring to his daughter, 22. “But I have not personally talked to them.”
Jon and ex-wife Kate Gosselin’s family life with older children Mady and Cara, now 26, and sextuplets Hannah, Collin, Aeden, Leah, Joel and Alexis, now 22, was documented on the TLC show, which was renamed as Kate Plus 8 amid the now-exes’ divorce. While Jon has since had a relationship with Hannah and Collin, he has been estranged from his other children for years.
The family’s dynamics are chronicled in Collin’s new memoir, In The Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood, where he alleges being physically abused by Kate, 51, during his childhood. (Kate has long denied allegations of abuse.)
When asked on Friday if he hopes to have a conversation with his estranged children, Jon replied, “Of course I want to talk to them.”
“It’s not about the book stuff,” he explained, referring to Collin’s memoir. “I just want to know how their life is going. I mean, we’re perfect strangers now. It’s been a long time with Mady and Cara. About 13 years I’ve been estranged from them. I have no idea why. And then the other four, I haven’t seen them since before COVID, maybe.”
While sending a message directly to his six estranged children, Jon noted that he has “tried to reach out” publicly to them.
“In the early days [I] tried to reach out to you privately,” he noted. “I hope you understand that I still love you. I hope one day you reach out to me. And please read your brother’s book because I think that will explain a lot. Be your own person. You are all adults now. Form your own opinions and try to take in as much information before you talk ill will or anything about anyone in this family.”
Since the release of Collins’ memoir, news broke that a documentary about Jon & Kate Plus 8 was underway.
“Production is underway on a documentary film untangling the story of what came next for the Gosselin family,” a Wednesday, October 21, announcement from Netflix’s Tudum reads, revealing that Jon, Collin and Hannah will be interviewed. “The new documentary pieces together the story from the perspectives of the children who grew up on camera, the adults who built a brand around them and the audience that couldn’t look away.”
Hannah has recently claimed that she hasn’t spoken to Collin in nearly one year, which he publicly refuted.
