Actor/Sarah Jessica Parker’s husband (those are apparently equally important titles) Matthew Broderick gave a rather bizarre interview to New York magazine recently, in which he talked about his son’s curiosity about cigarettes. Both Broderick and Parker smoke – though Broderick claims that he gave up smoking and still smokes – all within the same sentence.
“Sarah Jessica Parker still smokes? She, the perfect mother who hates her nannies to be mentioned in news articles? The Greenwich Village icon who starred in a show about sex but refused to take her bra off during the act? No way!”
But apparently it’s so — and the habit rubs off on her husband, Matthew Broderick, and even (gasp!) her 5-year-old son, James Wilkie. At the screening of Broderick’s new vice-filled film, Finding Amanda, where he plays a gamble-holic having an off-the-wagon weekend in Vegas, Ferris Bueller told us all about it.
“I used to smoke cigarettes, and I still do, lately. I gave that up a long time ago, but every now and then I will fall off for a week.” And guess who’s fault that might be? Broderick says SJP is “worse than me on that.” And James Wilkie is “already curious. He’ll see a cigarette butt and say, ‘What is that? Why do people smoke?’ I can just see the little budding gene of a smoker in there.”
[From New York Magazine]
Umm…. umm… so many things I want to say. Struggling to choose which ones. I’m not going to go off on smoking, everyone knows the statistics. What I’m really surprised about is that Matthew Broderick would have such a cavalier attitude towards his son’s relationship with cigarettes – and that such a normally private actor would choose to share such a thing. In sharing it, it seems like Broderick doesn’t understand that this isn’t a good or normal thing.
When I was growing up, the smoking parents of my friends would constantly talk about how bad it was and how they wished they’d never started. Most of them seemed to constantly be making a big deal about how bad it was – seemingly in an attempt to prevent their children from picking up the habit. Several of them smoked in a bathroom or some isolated area. But none of them seemed to have an open, “whatever” sort of attitude about it. If you think you “see the little budding gene of a smoker” in your kid, it seems to me that the least you should do is actively discourage it.
Here’s : Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick and son James Wilke leaving Claridges Hotel in London in September 2005. Header from the US premiere of Sex and the City in New York on May 27th. Images thanks to WENN.
yikes!
I get what he means with the part about “giving it up a long time ago, but picking it up for a week once in a while” because I’ve done that too. I don’t smoke but randomly (in summer for some reason) I’ll start smoking like a chimney for a week or two. Then, just as quickly, I’m done again…
But um, yeah, smoking isn’t a gene!! It’s a habit!
Good thing they aren’t habitual drinkers!
Just a specific comment. I get into this with friends all the time. Smoking is like everything else…sex, drinking, cussing..etc. I’m tired of people railing on smokers. I’m not one, but it is silly. If you teach your kids right, you should not be labeled a bad role model. I’m not saying i’ve heard this in this situation but, especially with smoking, it is insinuated all the time. I have sex, but would never condone my child doing it at this point. Same with drinking, and smoking(i don’t anymore). Give the smokers a break. The second you start hiding your drinking and pretending you don’t have sex, is the day i’ll back the anti-smoking group when it centers on our kids.
All kids are curious about it. All kids are curious about everything, particularly things that are bad for them. Does anyone remember the candy cigarettes when we were kids?
If it were my kid, I’d try to keep the butts picked up a little more, try to teach him how unhealthy it is, and then not worry over his curiosity about it.
I’m with Keith on being tired of people railing on smokers. We don’t rail on people who have unprotected sex with multiple partners, we don’t treat the alcoholic like a pariah and make him go drink outside. Smokers are all pretty much aware that it’s a filthy, unhealthy addiction, but it is an addiction.
And I do think that the tendency to have an addictive personality is genetic, so he could be right about raising a little smoker.
Let those without vices cast the first stone.
LITTLE JAMES: “Daddy? Is smoking why mommy looks about twenty years older than you do, and sounds like a man when she talks?”
BRODERICK: “Ummm… Yeah.”
I agree, Jaybird. And for the record, I smoked for many years and am still hardly vice-free, but if my child expressed interest in tobacco at the age of five (or any age, for that matter), I’d do my best to convince him otherwise.
When I asked that same question to my Dad at the same age (36 years ago), he gave me a cigarette. It was the smartest thing he ever could have done. I took one puff, choked my lungs out, thought it was the nastiest thing I had ever put in my mouth, and have not touched a cigarette since. My dad dying of cancer when I was 15 also helped me to realize what an awful habit smoking is.
I think the issue with smoking is that it’s a carcinogen and can really cause health problems in children along with being implicated in SIDs deaths. So it is different than other vices in parents if it’s done right in the house with kids around. I do understand what you guys are saying about smokers being vilified, though.
Smoking isn’t a gene, but the proclivity to become addicted/ addictive personalities is genetic. Also studies prove kids of parents who smoke are more likely to become smokers themselves. Not guaranteed (nothing is) but definitely more likely.
I quit when before I got pregnant and never went back. Amazing as nothing else worked to make me quit. I got lucky. I hope my child never starts of course.
I hear what people are saying about people vilifying smokers and it has gotten really bad in the last few years.
Smoking is not a character deficiency. I hate people who make faces at smokers and roll their eyes, get dramatic. THAT, to me, is much more rude than someone lighting up – and I don’t even smoke! Christ. Some woman rolled her eyes and waved her hand dramatically back and forth at a friend of mine who was smoking on an outdoor patio at a bar. DESIGNATED area for smokers. I told her she was being an asshole. No need to be extreme either way.
SJP is 44 and I know it’s not fair but smoking really seems to age women even faster than men. She should quit! Why bother using expensive face creams, etc when you just undo it with smoking? Makes no sense.
A drunken driving dad can kill his kids on the back seat as well, am not saying smoking is less bad than drinking!
Smoking is not good by any means, but it has to be done with moderation as well, and from far distance from children!
Anything in excess can do awful things to you…
I am a smoker and I smoke like 5 cigs a day,and always outside!!!! Used to be a much more than that…like a pack a day! Sometimes even more!!!! It was really taking its toll on me but now I feel like I still can have my moment solo in the garden with a cup of coffee or either while having few drinks with the girls, without being obsessed or exposing anyone else to it…
especially if you have kids around the house! It´s a BIG NO NO! Of course you can´t keep them away from it for like forever, but the less the better!
For all those who say that non smokers are being rude or being an ass for not wanting to breath in that crap… I’m sorry, but I have the right to clean air. I have Asthma and even when I’m outside cigarette smoke really bothers me.If you light up around me I’ll make a face and walk away – and I won’t be back. Smoking around other people is incredibly rude and ignorant- particularly if you don’t ask first. (if someone asks, i say yes,and then excuse myself…but I’ll come back if they ask)
It’s a disgusting habit that I’m really glad i never picked up.
This was a weird comment for him to make. I quit smoking before I had kids, but when I did smoke, I was sure to do it away from children. As Celebitchy says, second-hand smoke can really affect children and even contribute to SIDS. So, why not step outside?
I see a public retraction/apology coming soon. Oh, and I also see little James Wilkie finding daddy’s gay porn mags lying around… wonder if he has the DL gay gene, too? 😆
How will daddy explain to James the details of him killing two people back in 1985? That will be much more interesting than this lame smoking story. If he can see a budding little smoker gene, maybe there is a budding little getting drunk and killing people with your car gene.
Yeah I should ‘fess up that I smoked as a rebellious high schooler. I quit years ago without a problem, but in the last year have cravings whenever I smell one. I’m not trying to sound high and mighty. What I wanted to emphasize was that I was surprised by the casualness with which Matthew Broderick mentioned the whole thing, especially considering he’s generally so private. I just thought that if he finally choose to be chatty, he’d pick something else to say.
I smoke every now and then, also pretty casually. It’s good to get it out of your system if you’re just craving one, then you won’t smoke more for a couple of days, then weeks go by and you’re like, hey i want to a cigarette now, sure, why not? Sure it’s bad for you, but so’s living!
I can’t believe they smoke around their child knowing all of the negative health affects it will cause on the little guy.
When I looked at the photo of Matt and SJP (Sarah’s got jaws like a pony), it struck me what a tremendous actor Matthew is. He is obviously a total dorkwad in real life and yet when he was in Ferris Beuller,he came off as cool incarnate. Bravo brother bravo. As far as the smoking issue goes, meh.
We used to have candy cigarettes when I was little. I grew up as a nonsmoker and still am.
I quit smoking on January 10 2007 and have managed NOT to have any relapses. It isn’t easy and I don’t rag on my smoking friends. I quit for some extended periods in my life and then started again, 10 years was one of those extended periods. I don’t think I’ll start again, my new husband doesn’t smoke and I now work in public health…that is enough to cure you of the urge forever when you see what the damage it does cumulatively as people get older.
I loved Ferris Bueller…still do but he’s an ass for being so casual about such a damaging habit…
Banana Boat
This press release was dated April 2008; Scientists from an EU-supported consortium have discovered that a mutation in a human gene confers nicotine dependence.Roughly half of the people of European descent carry at least one copy of this genetic variant, which does not influence smoking initiation, but makes it more difficult to quit.
True Celebitchy, smoking is a carcinogen, but so are alcohol, car exhaust, electromagnetic fields, and plastic microwave containers. Enough with the targeting of smokers, please. In this particular case we’re talking about a family that lives in Manhattan- almost any urban area contains far more significant health threats than SJP’s old cigarette butts. Not that I’m judging them for where they live either, just trying to insert a little objectivity here
http://www.canceriq.org/causes.html
Hollz- just walk away then, you have the right to do so
Irce, of course there are heaps of dangers around us at all times that we CAN’T control.
What does that have to do with being an idiot and CHOOSING to inhale poison?
Lighten up!Damn….they will explain the bad habits the same way we all do…Oh wait maybe you try to have no bad habits at all once you become parent.Maybe you can than explain to your child how come his parents are “perfectly” arrogant ass holes.
I’m amazed at the number of people posting in defense of smokers. There is no defense. It is a deadly, smelly and expensive habit that has absolutely no redeeming qualities. There is no excuse for anyone, ever to smoke cigarettes.
I say this as a former smoker of 25 years who has lost too many relatives to cancer and lung diseases.
And smoking around kids is a form of child abuse, IMHO.
I am a former smoker also.It’s not the smoking people are commenting on-it’s the attitude.Ya know listening to the bible rant from the ex-whore…..
Funny that Broderick is on the same page w/Graziano. Just funny, that’s all.
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