Chet Hanks is opening up about his experience growing up with famous parents, revealing that while “there’s a lot of advantages sometimes it can be pretty weird.”
The 31-year-old son of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson says that his experience was “even more complicated” because he was not famous, explaining that he was “just the son of somebody famous.”
“So I hadn’t even done anything to deserve any sort of recognition and that created a lot of contempt,” he shared. Chet admitted that he would not change his “situation,” as he feels “very blessed” for being able to “travel the world, stay in nice hotels, and fly on private planes”
He also took a moment to talk about the relationship with his father, confessing he “didn’t have a strong male role model,” to advise him on navigating fame.
© GettyImages“People would make up their minds about me before they even got the chance to know me and it was extremely hard to break down their walls,” he continued, revealing he encountered “a lot of disdain, a lot of animosity and negativity. Because everybody was just prepared to hate my guts.”
Chet says that he wishes his father would have said to him that in reality everyone was just “jealous” of him. “You have all these things that they want so they are trying to f–king throw their shade at you so you can feel s–ty about yourself because they are jealous,‘” adding, “This is me now telling the younger version of myself what I needed to hear then.”
