The Surprising Circumstances of His Divorce
Just one day after Schwarzenegger’s time as the Governor of California ended, Shriver asked him a burning question in couple’s therapy: Did he father a child with their longtime maid, Mildred Baena?
The answer, Schwarzenegger told her, was yes.
He came clean about having had an affair with Mildred Baena in 1997, which led to her pregnancy with Joseph. Schwarzenegger said he didn’t realize Joseph was his son until he started recognizing himself in the boy’s features.
After 25 years of marriage, Shriver filed for divorce shortly after finding out the truth about her husband’s affair. The divorce was finalized in 2021. Today, his son Joseph is 25.
“I’m gonna have to live with it the rest of my life,” Schwarzenegger says in the docuseries. “People will remember my successes, and they will also remember those failures. It’s a major failure. I mean, I had failures in the past in my career, but I mean, this is like a whole different ball game, a whole different dimension of failure.
“It was wrong what I did, but I don’t want Joseph to feel that he’s not welcome in this world because he’s very much welcome in this world and I love him.”
All three episodes of Arnold are now streaming on Netflix.
Main Image: Arnold Schwarzenegger pictured in Arnold courtesy of Netflix
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