Chynna Phillips, daughter of The Mamas & The Papas singer John Phillips, says her father dropped a shocking confession in her lap the night before she married her husband Billy Baldwin in 1995.
In a video titled “My Wedding Nightmare” posted to her YouTube channel, Phillips recalled she had “a really intense conversation with my father” on the eve of her nuptials.
“We talked about stuff that was pretty earth-shattering and a lot had come to the surface and my father was having a ton of feelings and, of course, that made me have a ton of feelings and I remember I was up all night just weeping and [felt] numb as well,” she said.
“She continued, “I would weep and then I would go stoic again and then I would weep and then I would go stoic again, and it was because my father had just revealed some really big information to me and I just felt blindsided by it.”
Phillips added, “I know it sounds horrible that my dad would do that to me on the night before my wedding, but he didn’t intend to do that, it was more like it just evolved in our conversation the night before I got married.”
The 56-year-old did not disclose what was contained within the confession from her father, but she felt that it was driven by the fact he was giving her away at the wedding.
“And I don’t think it was any coincidence that he was walking me down the aisle with my mother, and I think he felt like he needed to come clean before he walked me down the aisle for his own conscience. I felt that he felt that he needed to do that just so that it was genuine.”
Even though the conversation left her feeling like she was on “autopilot” afterwards and during her wedding, she still found the discussion “priceless.”
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“At the same time it was one of the most priceless conversations I’d ever had with my father and it was definitely, bar none, the most honest conversation I’d had with my father, and the most raw and real conversation I’d ever had with my dad,” she said.
Phillips has multiple half-siblings from her father. The eldest, singer Mackenzie Phillips and her brother Jeffrey, are from his first wife Susan Stuart Adams, followed by Bijou Phillips and Tamerlane Phillips, with his third wife Genevieve Waite.
Mackenzie and Phillips spoke about their troubled childhood with their father in a previous video on Phillips YouTube channel, discussing Mackenzie’s allegation that she had a consensual sexual relationship with their father.
According to her 2009 memoir, “High on Arrival,” Mackenzie claimed John had raped her at age 19 and a consensual relationship began that lasted for ten years before she became pregnant. She claimed at that point the incest stopped and she had an abortion.
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During her conversation with Mackenzie in her video, Chynna noted, “Obviously, he’s an amazing songwriter and, you know I loved his laugh, and yet there was this whole other side to dad that was, I mean, kind of, like a monster. He was so dark, and you just didn’t know who you were going to get. It was very unpredictable.”
In recalling her conversation with her father before her wedding, Phillips described it as “such a defining moment it my life, that it changed me forever.”
John died in 2001 at the age of 65, but Phillips noted her ongoing conflicting feelings about him, acknowledging his addiction problems and her struggles to forgive him.
“You know it’s easy to say, I forgive you’… but the truth is is that forgiveness takes time, it’s a process,” Phillips said.
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She continued, “It’s hard for me to dissect it and to say like ‘Okay, well, what am I forgiving him for? For what he did? The addiction? Abandoning me? Am I forgiving him for using me as pawn, for all the things I saw that I never should have seen as a child?’”
The Wilson-Phillips singer decided “I kind of just had to say like when you’re paid in one lump sum, I just had to say, ‘Okay I’m just going to have to forgive in general, I’m just going to have to forgive all around.’”
Phillips married Baldwin in 1995, and the couple share three children Jameson, Brooke and Vance.
During her video, she also acknowledged the past 10 years have been stressful and her marriage was “in shambles” at one point.
In a video posted earlier this month, she and her husband appeared together to discuss their marriage and admitted to going through a six-month separation period, but insisted they “worked through it.” Phillips noted that she and Baldwin see the world through “very different lenses,” referring to her dedication to Christianity.
