Rob Lowe never intended to tell his son, John, about his scandalous past. Instead, he learned about it at school.
John, 27, recently discussed how he found out about the former Brat Pack member’s notorious sex tape that leaked in 1988.
Rob, 58, and John — who has followed in his acting father’s footsteps — spoke to Men’s Health in a recent profile in which John admitted he was a young teenager when a classmate told him about his dad’s infamous indiscretion.
“I was in eighth grade or freshman year of high school, and some kid said, ‘You know, your dad has a sex tape online,’” John said. “I was like, ‘What?’”
The Stanford University graduate added the “West Wing” alum and his mother, Sheryl Berkoff, never spoke to him and his older brother Matthew about the explicit recording.
John continued, “I don’t think most parents ever have that moment where they sit the kids down and go, ‘OK, we’ve got to tell you something.’ A kid just figures it out. There weren’t milestone markers, like, ‘OK, he’s 16 now, time for them to learn about this part of our life!’”
“Wikipedia and Google took care of that for us,” Lowe jokingly interjected.
The “St. Elmo’s Fire” actor was 24 years old when he was caught in a rendezvous with two women, one aged 22 and the other just 16.
He shot to fame in the 1980s and began drinking as teen, entering into a life of hard-partying to cope with his success.
In 1990, Lowe quit drinking and sought help from a rehab program. He has reportedly been sober ever since.
Lowe noted in 2019 that the sex tape experience helped him kick alcoholism in an interview on SiriusXM’s “The Jess Cagle Show.”
The “Parks and Recreation” star admitted that the tape led him on a path to living a sober lifestyle. “I think it’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said.
“Honestly, I do, because it got me sober. Sober got me married. I’ve been married 29 years and I have two great sons, so I don’t think any of that happens without going through that scandal,” he stated. “It was one of the reasons I got sober. I woke up one day and was like, ‘What am I doing with my life? 29 years in.’”
John has hopefully learned from his dad’s mistakes now that he’s embarked on his own journey through Hollywood. The father-son duo starred together in the Fox sitcom “The Grinder” for one season beginning in 2015, and the 2019 romance flick “Holiday in the Wild” on Netflix.
The pair will next be seen again in the upcoming streaming series, “Unstable,” about a bereaved and spiraling biotech genius who leans on his estranged son for support as they work to save the family business. It premiers March 30 on Netflix.