It’s all good! Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid‘s grown-up son, Jack Quaid, recently sat down with Theo Von and Matthew Cole Weiss for their Allegedly podcast, and detailed what it was like when his famous parents split in 1997, when he was just 8 years old.
“I acknowledge fully that the way that I grew up was not normal,” the Vinyl actor, 23, said. “But at the same time, despite what my parents do, they’re still a mom and a dad. They’re not like characters at the dinner table. My dad has never been Jerry Lee Lewis at my graduation, nothing has gone down like that. I have perspective on it simply if all the other kids I grew up had celebrity or actor parents. Then I’d think, ‘This is the world!'”
The Hollywood scion, who has been working as an actor himself since 2012, said he was too young to comprehend the situation at the time. “My parents got divorced when I was 8. It’s one of those weird ages [for kids when their parents] get divorced. You’re old enough to know what’s going on, but young enough to be kind of naïve about it,” he recalled.
The When Harry Met Sally actress, 54, wed Quaid, 61, in 1991, and the couple finalized their divorce in 2001. They were granted joint custody of Jack. Years later, Ryan acknowledged her high-profile affair with Russell Crowe during her marriage to Quaid. “It was a great story,” the You’ve Got Mail actress told InStyle. “But what wasn’t in the story was the reality of my marriage for nine years. Dennis was not faithful to me for a long time, and that was very painful. I found out more about that once I was divorced … But Russell didn’t break up the marriage. He was definitely there at the end, but it wasn’t his fault.”
Jack said he was confronted with his parents’ high-profile split while he was out and about doing everyday activities. “It’s kind of hard to ignore when you’re at a grocery store and you’re like, checking out and you know those People and In Touch magazines on the side,” the up-and-coming actor recalled. “And you look at them and there’s a photo of them with a little paper rip thing, that graphic image between them. If they hadn’t told me about the divorce, I would’ve been like ‘What’s that?’ as a kid.”
He continued: “No, I mean, it’s one of those that it’s a hard deal. But I mean, it’s just as hard as any other divorce, really.”
After that split, Jack remained close to both and even solicits them for occasional professional advice. “I’m a huge fan of both of their work. The thing that’s nice about it, something that I’m very grateful to have, is that they share this enthusiasm for telling stories and acting,” he said earlier in the podcast. Growing up in a star-studded household also made him astute about other people’s intentions.
“I would notice kids at school would want to be my friend for the wrong reasons,” Jack recalled. “I just kind of know who’s a bulls–t artist immediately.”
Though the breakup was messy, the two remain on good terms. “Do they talk? Yeah, they see each other from time to time. Def for me.”
Quaid married Kimberly Quaid in 2004, and the two share twins Buddy and Brandy. Ryan went on to date John Mellencamp for nearly four years before splitting in August 2014.
