Things are on the mend! Oliver Hudson opened up about reconnecting with his estranged father during a Monday, May 14, interview on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen — and revealed that the talk show was what initially sparked their reconciliation.
When Cohen, 49, turned the conversation to “something a little serious” regarding the the 41-year-old Splitting Up Together actor’s dad, Bill, asking if it was WWHL that spurred the reconnecting, Hudson responded cheerfully: “Yes! It was, it was.”
He continued, “I just had lunch with my dad a few weeks ago,” before Cohen asked how the show helped. “Because we talked about it,” Hudson said. “And it made him text me, and then we reconnected, and we had breakfast and then it was six months later and we had lunch about two weeks ago.”
Hudson — who shares his biological dad with famous sister Kate, 39 — added that “it’s great, it’s been really great.”
The famous family feud began following an Instagram post from Father’s Day in 2015. Hudson posted a throwback photo of him and Kate with Bill and captioned it “Happy Abandonment Day,” which led to the public disowning from their dad.
Bill revealed in an interview with Daily Mail that the post was “a dagger to the heart.”
He continued: “If what he wanted was me out of their lives, then he’s succeeded. I don’t want to see either of my eldest children ever again. It’s over. I say to them now, ‘I set you free. I had five birth children but I now consider myself a father of three. I no longer recognize Oliver and Kate as my own. I would ask them to stop using the Hudson name. They are no longer a part of my life. Oliver’s Instagram post was a malicious, vicious, premeditated attack. He is dead to me now. As is Kate. I am mourning their loss even though they are still walking this earth.”
Hudson opened up about their broken relationship for the first time on WWHL later that same year. “It actually started a dialogue,” he said. “I haven’t talked to my father in 12 years. In my dark, crazy sense of humor, I posted this ‘Happy Abandonment Day’ thing, which everyone went crazy over, and I was just trying to be funny. And at the end of the day it was a good thing.”
Oliver and Kate were ultimately raised by their mom, Goldie Hawn, and her longtime life partner, Kurt Russell, after their biological parent’s divorce in 1980 when Oliver was only 4 years old.
