Sylvester Stallone joked he has to put off his retirement plans because of his eldest daughter Sophia’s upcoming wedding.
“One of my daughters is getting married,” the actor, 80, said during a Tuesday, October 13, appearance on Live With Kelly and Mark. “[She] found a great guy. He came into the room … he actually asked for her hand.”
Sophia, 30, and longtime boyfriend Michael Sheehan announced in August that they were engaged. Stallone welcomed Sheehan into the family with a post of his own at the time.
“We are so ecstatic about the engagement of our daughter Sophia to Michael!” the Rocky star wrote via Instagram alongside a photo of him and his daughter from the engagement plus a family photo.
Kelly Ripa joked that Sheehan must have been “terrified” to ask Stallone for his blessing.
“He was very confident and I went, ‘Wow, good luck pal,’” he recalled. “My wife had to be there to be [the] referee.”
Ripa also asked how much the Tulsa King star was “going to pony up” for his daughter’s wedding.
“Oh man, it’s almost embarrassing to say, but I can’t retire,” he quipped. “I can’t retire, I’m serious.”
Stallone confessed he tried to convince Sophia to tie the knot in Las Vegas instead.
“I said, ‘Why don’t you guys go to Vegas? I’ll give you the money. Have Elvis marry you for $5 … and take what I would have spent,’” he said.
Sophia seemingly did not take her father’s deal. Luckily for the actor, his series, Tulsa King, just dropped its fourth season and was already renewed for a fifth. Stallone stars as Dwight “The General” Manfredi, an American Mafia capo who has been recently released from prison in New York. His character is sent to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and he sets up a criminal organization.
Stallone also gets to work with youngest daughter Scarlet on Tulsa King, where she plays a waitress and horse caretaker named Spencer. (The Rambo actor shares son Seargeoh with first wife Sasha Czack and daughters Sophia, Sistine and Scarlet with wife Jennifer Flavin. Stallone and Czack were also parents to son Sage who died of heart disease in 2012.)
“At first it was very, very tense because you just want to protect her,” Stallone said of working on the show alongside his youngest daughter, 24. “And she goes, ‘I’m OK. I got it. And I’m taller than you, so relax.’ That kind of thing. So she’s actually grown up in this business … that’s their frame of reference. She has this quirky side to her, but it’s very, very creative. And boy, this next season, she really comes into her own.”
